Clinical Trials

The purpose of this study is to evaluate how well bleomycin, carboplatin, etoposide, or cisplatin work in treating pediatric and adult patients with germ cell tumors. Active surveillance may help doctors to monitor subjects with low risk germ cell tumors after their tumor is removed. Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as bleomycin, carboplatin, etoposide, and cisplatin, work in different ways to stop the growth of tumor cells, either by killing the cells, by stopping them from dividing, or by stopping them from spreading.

The purpose of this study is to determine if long-term ovarian cancer survivors after receipt of a vaccine targeting folate receptor alpha will have persistent T cell and antibody responses to folate receptor alpha and will have broad evidence of systemic immune activation.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the immune cell repertoire changes during early and late metastasis which could shed light into how the tumor microenvironment in metastatic disease becomes tumor permissive.

The purpose of this study is to study the handling of ovarian tissue, cryopreservation technology, and oocyte maturation for female pediatric cancer patients and other female patients whose future fertility will be affected due to a disease or treatment.

The purpose of this study is to assemble a collection of serial plasma biospecimens from women with ovarian, primary peritoneal, or fallopian tube cancer for future research projects to identify changes in levels of various plasma components that occur during the course of ovarian cancer, including changes that occur with debulking surgery, chemotherapy, disease relapse, and subsequent therapy.

The purpose of this project is to determine the feasibility and accuracy of using saliva to remotely monitor CMV infection in individuals receiving treatment for ovarian cancer.
 

The purposes of this study are to analyze the ovarian function of female premenopausal melanoma survivors who have undergone immunotherapy, and compare with data from age-matched controls, prospectively investigate ovarian function in premenopausal women with melanoma undergoing immunotherapy, and to identify the impact of ovarian function change on the frequency and function of CD8+ T cells during immunotherapy.

This study aims to identify candidate High Grade Serous Cancer (HGSC) early detection and chemotherapy treatment response biomarkers.  For the purpose of this study we define high grade serous cancers to include invasive cancers arising in the ovary and/or fallopian tubes (FT).  Using mass spectrometry we will deeply profile and quantitate dynamic changes in the plasma proteome and N-gylcocapture sub-proteome that occur as a consequence of surgical debulking and platinum-based chemotherapy.  

This is a peripheral blood Collection Protocol to study the T-cell immune responses of patients with malignancies displaying one of three different patterns of antigen expression: (1) Cohort 1 focuses on cancers displaying a high (80-90%) frequency of MUC1 expression and variably high (unreported to 50%) HER2/neu (“HER2”) expression; (2) Cohort 2 focuses on primary or secondary myelofibrosis (MF) displaying mutated calreticulin (muCALR); (3) Cohort 3 focuses on glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) which often displays the cytomegalovirus tegument protein CMVpp65. Cohort 1 includes blood collections for in vitro studies which are a component of NIH-funded Project 3 within the Mayo Clinic Pancreatic SPORE, “Optimal Immunotargeting of MUC1 for Advanced Pancreatic Cancer” (Principal Investigator Dr. Gendler). Eligibility Criteria, keep current Eligibility Criteria, but precede by:: "Three cohorts of patients will be collected.:Cohort 1 includes (1) advanced unresectable pancreatic cancer, (2-4) advanced, unresectable breast cancer (up to 6 donors per phenotype: triple negative [HER2, estrogen and progesterone receptor (ER and PR) all negative], HER2 positive whatever the ER/PR status,, and HER2 negative/ER positive), (5) advanced, unresectable colorectal cancer, (6) advanced, unresectable ovarian cancer, (7) advanced, unresectable clear cell kidney cancer, (8) advanced, unresectable bladder cancer, (9) advanced, unresectable lung adenocarcinoma, (10) advanced, unresectable multiple myeloma. Also eligible are (11) up to 6 donors with triple negative breast cancer and (12) up to 6 donors with colorectal cancer who have no clinical evidence of residual (macroscopic) disease following an attempt to perform definitive treatment (including surgery, radiation and/or adjuvant or neoadjuvant chemotherapy). Cohort 2 includes (1) muCALR+ primary MF, and (2) muCALR+ secondary MF. Cohort 3 includes (1) CMVpp65 absent and (2) CMVpp65 present GBM.. Patients in all subcohorts except 1.11 and 1.12 currently have unresectable advanced or recurrent cancers, and may undergo the collection: (1) prior to initiation of systemic therapy; (2) if patient is already engaged in an ongoing cyclical systemic therapy, collection should be within three days prior to the end of the current therapy cycle, if necessary delayed until all clinical parameters are acceptable to proceed with the next planned cycle of therapy; (3) if patient is completing non-cyclical therapy, collection should be at least 2.5-3.0 weeks after completion of the therapy, or delayed until all clinical parameters are acceptable to proceed with any planned follow-up therapy. Patients in cohorts 1.11 and 1.12 (currently lacking detectable cancer) will undergo the collection at least 4 weeks after conclusion of therapy. In addition to belonging to one of these 16 subcohorts, patients will be required to have bloodwork demonstrating a blood hemoglobin ≥ 10 g/dL, a neutrophil count ≥ 1,500 /microliter, and platelets ≥ 100,000 /microliter, performed within 7 days prior to the collection.

Effective treatments for recurrent gynecological cancer are lacking, and there is a need for novel therapeutic options. One of the barriers to improving outcomes in this subgroup of patients is the paucity of tumor models that can mimic patient characteristics to study novel therapies. Patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models are considerate the most representative pre-clinical model of human cancer, recapitulating the key characteristics of the original patient tumor. Other preclincal models to test drug effcicacy includes ex vivo 3D culture and 2D culture systems. In this study, we make and test preclinical models of gynecological cancers (ovarian, fallopian tube, peritoneal, uterine, vulvar, cervix, and vaginal) of any histologic subtype using surplus tumor specimens obtained at the time of routine tumor biopsy procedure, or clinically-indicated surgery.