My mother was in a stage 2 clinical trial of Erbitux & Ixabepilone. This was prior to Oct 2007 when Ixabepilone was approved for late stage breast cancer. It is now called "Ixempra".
She had the whipple in 2005, and was cancer free for awhile. Unfortunately surgery wasn't an option.
I have great warm fuzzies for the Erbitux/Ixabepilone combo. My mother's CA 19-9 levels went from 19,000 to 2,842. In less then 3 months!! Almost a 90% decrease. Something I quite honestly hadn't expected would happen. She developed an abcess on her liver and missed too many weeks of the study to continue. I'm desperately trying to get her insurance to approve the Ixempra as a treatment, (since it's now FDA approved, just not yet for Pancreatic Cancer)..
The Erbitux/Ixabepilone combo was explained to me as a combination of drugs that prevent the "seeding" and "growth". Ixebepilone ie "Ixempra" is a fairly new class of drugs, called Epothilone B.
The study was conducted by Bristol Meyers Squibb. Stage 2 was set to run through November 2007; so by now I would expect it to be a Stage III trial.
Hope this helps. Good luck to you.