RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as ixabepilone, work in different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die.

PURPOSE: Phase II trial to study the effectiveness of ixabepilone in treating patients who have metastatic germ cell tumors that are refractory to cisplatin.

Condition	Treatment or Intervention	Phase
adult brain tumor extragonadal germ cell tumor ovarian germ cell tumor Testicular Cancer	Drug: ixabepilone  Procedure: chemotherapy	Phase II

OBJECTIVES:

• Determine the efficacy of ixabepilone in patients with metastatic cisplatin-refractory germ cell tumors.
• Determine the safety of this drug in these patients.

OUTLINE: Patients receive ixabepilone IV over 3 hours on day 1. Courses repeat every 21 days in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 10-29 patients will be accrued for this study within 1.3-4 years.

Ages Eligible for Study:  16 Years and above,  Genders Eligible for Study:  Both

Criteria

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Histologically confirmed germ cell tumor (GCT) (seminoma or non-seminoma) meeting the following criteria:
• Measurable metastatic disease by one of the following methods:
• Radiography
• If eligibility is defined by measurable disease only, there must be at least 1 site that has not been previously irradiated
• Alpha-fetoprotein greater than 15 ng/mL and/or ß-human chorionic gonadotropin greater than 2.2 mIU/L
• Previously treated progressive disease meeting 1 of the following criteria:
• Not a candidate for potentially curative therapy OR has already received high-dose chemotherapy regimens (prior paclitaxel allowed)
• Deemed to be cisplatin-refractory after prior cisplatin-based regimen AND does not want to have potentially curative high-dose therapy (mediastinal or primary refractory GCT)
• Prior treatment with 1 cisplatin-based regimen (primary mediastinal nonseminomatous GCT)

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS: Age

• 16 and over

Performance status

• Karnofsky 70-100%

Life expectancy

• Not specified

Hematopoietic

• Absolute neutrophil count at least 1,500/mm^3
• Platelet count greater than 100,000/mm^3
• Hemoglobin at least 10 g/dL

Hepatic

• Bilirubin no greater than 1.5 times normal
• SGOT no greater than 2 times upper limit of normal

Renal

• Creatinine no greater than 2.2 mg/dL

Other

• Not pregnant or nursing
• Negative pregnancy test
• No active infection

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY: Biologic therapy

• No concurrent immunotherapy

Chemotherapy

• See Disease Characteristics
• No other concurrent cytotoxic chemotherapy

Endocrine therapy

• Not specified

Radiotherapy

• See Disease Characteristics
• No concurrent radiotherapy

Surgery

• Not specified

Other

• No other concurrent experimental or commercial anticancer medications or therapies

New York
      Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York,  New York,  10021,  United States; Recruiting

Study chairs or principal investigators

Gnanamba Varuni Kondagunta, MD,  Principal Investigator,  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center   

Study ID Numbers:  CDR0000329992; MSKCC-03041; NCI-6022
Record last reviewed:  September 2004
Record first received:  October 3, 2003
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:  NCT00070096
Health Authority: Unspecified
ClinicalTrials.gov processed this record on 2004-11-17