Ixabepilone in Treating Young Patients With Solid Tumors or Leukemia That Haven't Responded to Therapy

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

* Meets 1 of the following criteria:

  * Histologically confirmed solid tumor (closed to accrual as of 10/4/2007) that relapsed after or failed to respond to front-line curative therapy and for which no other potentially curative treatment options exist

    * Curative therapy may include surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or any combination of these modalities
    * Eligible tumor types include, but are not limited to, the following:

      * Rhabdomyosarcoma
      * Other soft tissue sarcomas
      * Ewing's sarcoma family of tumors
      * Osteosarcoma
      * Neuroblastoma
      * Wilms' tumor
      * Hepatic tumors
      * Germ cell tumors
      * Primary brain tumors

        * Histologic confirmation may be waived for brain stem or optic glioma
  * Diagnosis of relapsed or refractory leukemia

    * Patients with refractory or second or greater relapsed leukemia must have \> 25% blasts in the bone marrow (M3 bone marrow) with or without active extramedullary disease (except for leptomeningeal disease)
    * Relapsed after or failed to respond to frontline curative therapy and no other potentially curative therapy (e.g., radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or any combination of these modalities) exists
  * Patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia must be refractory to treatment with retinoic acid and arsenic trioxide
  * Patients with Philadelphia chromosome positive chronic myelogenous leukemia must be refractory to imatinib
* No active CNS leukemia (CNS3)

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Age:

* 2 to 18 (solid tumor patients \[closed to accrual as of 10/4/2007\])
* 1 to 21 (leukemia patients)

Performance status:

* For patients age 11 to 21:

  * Karnofsky 50-100%
* For patients age 1 to 10:

  * Lansky 50-100%

Life expectancy:

* Not specified

Hematopoietic:

* Platelet count at least 100,000/mm\^3 (20,000/mm\^3 for leukemia patients)
* Hemoglobin ≥ 8.0 g/dL

Hepatic:

* Bilirubin less than 1.5 times upper limit of normal (ULN)
* SGOT and SGPT less than 2.5 times ULN
* No hepatic dysfunction that would preclude study

Renal:

* Creatinine normal for age OR
* Creatinine clearance at least 60 mL/min
* No renal dysfunction that would preclude study

Other:

* No known severe prior hypersensitivity reaction to agents containing Cremophor EL
* No clinically significant unrelated systemic illness (e.g., serious infections or other organ dysfunction) that would preclude study
* No grade 2 or greater preexisting sensory neuropathy
* More than 2 month since prior and no concurrent evidence of graft vs host disease
* Not pregnant or nursing
* Negative pregnancy test
* Fertile patients must use effective contraception

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

Biologic therapy:

* Recovered from all therapy-related acute toxic effects (leukemia patients only)
* Prior epoetin alfa allowed
* At least 3 days since other prior colony-stimulating factors (e.g., filgrastim (G-CSF), sargramostim (GM-CSF), or interleukin-11 (IL-11))
* At least 6 months since prior bone marrow transplantation
* At least 2 months since prior stem cell transplantation or rescue (leukemia patients)
* At least 7 days since prior therapy with a biological agent and hematopoietic growth factor with the exception of erythropoietin
* More than 3 weeks since prior monoclonal antibody therapy (leukemia patients only)
* No concurrent GM-CSF or IL-11
* No concurrent immunotherapy

Chemotherapy:

* See Disease Characteristics
* Recovered from all therapy-related acute toxic effects (leukemia patients only)
* At least 4 weeks since prior chemotherapy (6 weeks for nitrosoureas)
* No other concurrent anticancer chemotherapy

Endocrine therapy:

* Concurrent corticosteroids allowed for the control of symptoms related to tumor-associated edema in patients with brain tumors
* Patients with brain tumors must be on a stable or tapering dose of corticosteroids for 7 days before baseline scan is performed for the purpose of assessing response to study therapy
* Must be on a stable or tapering dose of corticosteroids for 7 days prior to study entry (leukemia patients only)

Radiotherapy:

* See Disease Characteristics
* Recovered from all therapy-related acute toxic effects (leukemia patients only)
* At least 4 weeks since prior radiotherapy
* More than 2 weeks since prior local palliative radiotherapy (leukemia patients only)
* More than 3 months since prior total-body irradiation, craniospinal radiotherapy, or radiotherapy to ≥50% of the pelvis (leukemia patients only)
* More than 6 weeks since prior other substantial bone marrow radiotherapy (leukemia patients only)
* No prior extensive radiotherapy (e.g., craniospinal irradiation, total body irradiation, or radiotherapy to more than half of the pelvis)
* No concurrent anticancer radiotherapy

Surgery:

* See Disease Characteristics

Other:

* Recovered from prior therapy
* At least 30 days since any prior investigational anticancer therapy
* At least 1 week since prior known inhibitors of CYP3A4, including any of the following:

  * Antibiotics (i.e., clarithromycin, erythromycin, or troleandomycin)
  * Anti-HIV agents (i.e, delaviridine, nelfinavir, amprenavir, ritonavir, idinavir, saquinavir, or lopinavir)
  * Anti-fungals (i.e., itraconazole, ketoconazole, fluconazole \[doses \> 3mg/kg/day\], or voriconazole)
  * Anti-depressants (i.e., nefaxodone or fluovoxamine)
  * Calcium channel blockers (i.e., verapamil or diltiazem)
  * Anti-emetics (i.e., aprepitant \[Emend®\])
  * Miscellaneous agents (i.e., amiodarone)
  * Grapefruit juice
* No other concurrent investigational agents
* No concurrent St. John's Wort
* No concurrent known inhibitors of CYP3A4, including grapefruit juice
* Concurrent other agents inducing CYP3A4 allowed