Vaccine Therapy in Treating Patients With Unresected Stage III or Stage IV Melanoma

RATIONALE: Vaccines made from a person's white blood cells and a donor's tumor cells may help the body build an effective immune response to kill tumor cells. PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying how well vaccine therapy works in treating patients with unresected stage III or stage IV melanoma.

OBJECTIVES: Primary * Determine the clinical activity of vaccine therapy comprising autologous dendritic cells pulsed with allogeneic melanoma tumor cell lysates (IDD-3), as measured by tumor control, in patients with unresected stage IIIB or IIIC or stage IV melanoma. Secondary * Determine the immunologic activity of this vaccine, as measured by T-cell and antibody responses to lysate or to melanoma antigens or peptides, in these patients. * Determine the safety of this vaccine, as measured by the incidence and severity of adverse events, in these patients. OUTLINE: This is an open-label, multicenter study. Patients undergo apheresis to collect peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). The PBMCs are cultured with sargramostim (GM-CSF) and interleukin-13 for the production of dendritic cells. The dendritic cells are then pulsed with lysates from 3 allogeneic melanoma tumor cell lines (IDD-3) to produce the vaccine. Patients receive vaccine therapy comprising IDD-3 administered as 1 subcutaneous and 5 intradermal injections at each of the 2 uninvolved lymph node-bearing regions once in weeks 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 16, and 22 in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. After completion of study treatment, patients are followed at 2, 10, 18, and 26 weeks. PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 12-37 patients will be accrued for this study within 4-12 months.