It is the broad, long-term goal of this program to build on and extend the current knowledge in the field of high dose therapy for patients with breast cancer. While the use of high dose therapy with hematopoietic support has resulted in improved outcome in selected patients, the relapse rate in those treated late in the course of their disease remains high. In order to improve the disease free and overall survival for women with breast cancer, the investigators in this renewal of the program project grant application will utilize a translational research approach, bridging the novel experimental concepts and observations made at the laboratory bench to clinical application at the patients' bedside. This program project will focus on the use and understanding of high dose therapies in an attempt to achieve a complete or near complete remission in patients with breast cancer and complement the high dose therapy by the addition of novel manipulations after the high dose therapy in order to improve the clinical outcome of such patients. The theme of this program project focuses on improving the therapeutic results and decreasing the toxicity of high dose combination alkylating agent therapy for breast cancer through a collaborative and integrated approach involving all the investigators in this program project grant. The three specific research projects are: (1) immunotherapy with antigen specific dendritic cells (DCs) and the measurement of its effect; (2) a multi-center trial of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) for breast cancer and testing for a graft-vs.-tumor (GVT) effect; (3) tumor drug resistance and pharmacology of each of the high dose drugs. Each of these projects are related to each other in its scientific and clinical interactions, and these three projects are supported by two cores: A) Administrative and Research Coordination; and B) Biostatistics and Data Management Core. The goal will be to identify the most promising approach or approaches for future studies.
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