RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Colony-stimulating factors such as filgrastim may increase the number of immune cells found in bone marrow or peripheral blood and may help a person's immune system recover from the side effects of chemotherapy.

PURPOSE: Phase I trial to study the effectiveness of paclitaxel, cisplatin, and topotecan with or without filgrastim in treating patients who have newly diagnosed stage III or stage IV epithelial ovarian cancer.

OBJECTIVES:

• Determine the maximum tolerated doses of paclitaxel, cisplatin, and topotecan administered together with or without filgrastim (G-CSF) in patients with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer.
• Describe and quantitate the clinical toxic effects of combination chemotherapy with paclitaxel, cisplatin, and topotecan with or without G-CSF.
• Assess preliminary evidence of antitumor activity of this combination chemotherapy in these patients.

OUTLINE: This is a dose escalation study of topotecan.

Patients receive paclitaxel IV over 3 hours and cisplatin IV on day 1, followed by topotecan IV over 30 minutes on days 1-3. Patients receive filgrastim (G-CSF) subcutaneously beginning on day 4 and continuing until blood counts recover. Treatment repeats every 3 weeks in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.

Cohorts of 4-6 patients receive escalating doses of topotecan until the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) is determined. The MTD is defined as the dose preceding that at which 2 of 6 patients experience dose limiting toxicities.

Patients are followed as clinically indicated.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: Approximately 25-30 patients will be accrued for this study.

• Biological: filgrastim
• Drug: cisplatin
• Drug: paclitaxel
• Drug: topotecan hydrochloride

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Histologically confirmed epithelial ovarian carcinoma

  • No borderline ovarian carcinoma
  • Stage III/IV disease that has been suboptimally or optimally debulked

• The following histologies are eligible:

  • Adenocarcinoma (unspecified)
  • Mucinous cystadenocarcinoma
  • Clear cell adenocarcinoma
  • Serous cystadenocarcinoma
  • Endometrioid adenocarcinoma
  • Transitional cell carcinoma
  • Malignant Brenner's tumor
  • Undifferentiated carcinoma
  • Mixed epithelial carcinoma
  • Extraovarian papillary serous cystadenocarcinoma
• Measurable or evaluable disease

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Age:

• Not specified

Performance status:

• GOG 0-1

Life expectancy:

• Enabling completion of at least 2 courses of therapy

Hematopoietic:

• Absolute neutrophil count at least 1,500/mm^3
• Platelet count at least 100,000/mm^3

Hepatic:

• Bilirubin no greater than 1.5 mg/dL

Renal:

• Creatinine clearance at least 60 mL/min

Cardiovascular:

• No myocardial infarction within 6 months
• No congestive heart failure
• No unstable or uncontrolled angina
• No history of cardiac arrhythmia requiring anti-arrhythmia medication
• No uncontrolled hypertension

Other:

• No hypersensitivity to E. coli-derived drug preparation
• No active infection
• No sensory neuropathy
• No other malignancies within the past 5 years except nonmelanomatous skin cancer

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

Biologic therapy:

• Not specified

Chemotherapy:

• No prior chemotherapy

Endocrine therapy:

• Not specified

Radiotherapy:

• No prior radiotherapy

Surgery:

• Recovered from any recent surgery