Vaccine Therapy in Treating Patients With Liver or Lung Metastases From Colorectal Cancer

RATIONALE: Vaccines made from a gene-modified virus and a person's white blood cells may make the body build an effective immune response to kill tumor cells. Biological therapies, such as Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), may stimulate the immune system in different ways and stop tumor cells from growing. Combining different types of biological therapies may kill more tumor cells. PURPOSE: This randomized phase II trial is studying giving vaccine therapy together with dendritic cells to see how well it works compared to giving vaccine therapy together with GM-CSF in treating patients with liver or lung metastases from colorectal cancer removed by surgery.

OBJECTIVES: Primary * Compare 2-year disease-free survival of patients with completely resected hepatic or pulmonary metastases secondary to colorectal cancer treated with adjuvant vaccine therapy comprising vaccinia-Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)-mucin 1 (MUC-1)- Triad of costimulatory molecules TRICOM vaccine (PANVAC-V) and fowlpox-CEA-MUC-1-TRICOM vaccine (PANVAC-F) administered with autologous dendritic cells or with sargramostim (GM-CSF). Secondary * Compare the rate and magnitude of immune response, as determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot (ELISpot), in patients treated with these regimens. OUTLINE: This is a randomized study. Patients are randomized to 1 of 2 treatment arms. * Arm I: Patients undergo leukapheresis to obtain leukocytes for generation of autologous dendritic cells (DC). Patients then receive autologous DC loaded with vaccinia-CEA-MUC-1-TRICOM (PANVAC-V) vaccine subcutaneously (SC) and intradermally (ID) on day 1 and autologous DC loaded with fowlpox-CEA-MUC-1-TRICOM (PANVAC-F) vaccine subcutaneously (SC) and intradermally (ID) on days 28, 56, and 84. * Arm II: Patients receive PANVAC-V SC on day 1 and PANVAC-F SC on days 28, 56, and 84. Patients also receive sargramostim (GM-CSF) SC into the same injection site once daily on days 0-3, 28-31, 56-59, and 84-87. After completion of study treatment, patients are followed for 2 years. PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 72 patients (36 per treatment arm) will be accrued for this study within 2 years.