Phase I Study of Vorinostat in Combination With Docetaxel in Patients With Advanced and Relapsed Solid Malignancies.

Vorinostat (also known as Suberoylanilide Hydroxamic Acid) is a new investigational drug that is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This drug has shown promising activity against a number of cancers. We want to determine if treatment with vorinostat in combination with a standard type of chemotherapy (docetaxel [Taxotere™]) is safe and possibly better than treatment with docetaxel alone. We also want to find out more about how patients and the cancer will react to the drugs, what happens to vorinostat in the human body (how your body reacts to this drug and breaks it down) and about its side effects when used in combination with chemotherapy (docetaxel).

The purpose of this study is to:

• Test the safety of the research study drug, vorinostat
• To determine if any toxicities or severe side effects occur when combining vorinostat with docetaxel (a standard chemotherapy treatment)
• To study how your body takes in, breaks down and responds to vorinostat
• To obtain more evidence of the ability of vorinostat to react against cancer, such as the kind that you have.

The use of vorinostat in combination with chemotherapy such as docetaxel may result in improved response of the cancer to treatment. Indeed, vorinostat may have an added benefit with docetaxel by promoting cancer cell death. This is because both drugs can interfere with the ability of the cancer to grow, although the way vorinostat does this is not clearly defined. Vorinostat and docetaxel both can disrupt the cancer's ability to produce daughter cancer cells and therefore, the administration of vorinostat before docetaxel is hoped to be better then either drug alone.