RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy such as gemcitabine and capecitabine use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Combining more than one chemotherapy drug may kill more tumor cells. PURPOSE: Phase II trial to study the effectiveness of combining gemcitabine with capecitabine in treating patients who have advanced renal cell cancer (kidney cancer).
OBJECTIVES: * Determine response (confirmed and unconfirmed complete and partial) of patients with advanced renal cell cancer treated with gemcitabine and capecitabine. * Determine the 6-month time to treatment failure rate and overall survival rate of patients treated with this regimen. * Determine the qualitative and quantitative toxic effects of this regimen in these patients. * Correlate, preliminarily, tumor response with the intratumoral content of the enzymes involved in the activation and degradation of these drugs in these patients. OUTLINE: Patients receive gemcitabine IV over 30 minutes on days 1, 8, and 15 and oral capecitabine twice daily on days 1-21. Courses repeat every 28 days in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Patients are followed every 3 months for 1 year and then every 6 months for 2 years. PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 38 patients will be accrued for this study within 3.8-4.2 months.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
NA
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
43
Capecitabine will be given 625 mg/m\^2 (1250 mg/m\^2/day) by mouth twice a day on day 1-21 for every cycle (1 cycle =28 days) until disease progression
Gemcitabine will be given 900 mg/m\^2 by intravenous infusion over 30 minutes on day 1, 8, and 15 for every cycle (1 cycle = 28 days) until disease progression.
Response
Time frame: every 8 weeks until progression
Survival
Time frame: every 8 weeks while on treatment, then every 3 months for first year, then every 6 months for 3 years
Time to treatment failure
Time frame: every 8 weeks until progression
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