A Phase I Study to Examine the Toxicity of Killer IG-Like Receptor (KIR) Mismatched Umbilical Cord Blood for Pediatric Patients With Malignant Solid Tumors

OBJECTIVES:

• Examine the impact of the use of killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR)-mismatched umbilical cord blood as a source of hematopoietic stem cells, after busulfan, melphalan, and anti-thymocyte globulin in pediatric patients with relapsed or refractory solid tumors.
• Determine the toxicity of this regimen, in terms of incidence of grade 3-4 acute graft-versus-host disease, donor/host chimerism, and cellular immunity against tumor cell lines, in these patients.

OUTLINE:

• Transplantation: Patients receive busulfan orally or IV every 6 hours on days -8 to -5, anti-thymocyte globulin IV over 6 hours on days -4 to -1, and melphalan IV over 15-20 minutes on days -4 to -2. Patients undergo allogeneic umbilical cord blood stem cell infusion on day 0. Patients receive sargramostim (GM-CSF) subcutaneously beginning on day 7 and continuing until blood counts recover.
• Graft-vs-host disease prophylaxis: Patients receive cyclosporine IV over 1 hour or orally twice daily on days -1 to 180 and methylprednisolone IV or orally once or twice daily on days 5 - 49.

Blood samples are collected periodically for immunophenotyping and flow cytometric analysis (including interferon gamma and other TH1 and TH2 cytokines).