Dendritic Cell Vaccination During Lymphoid Reconstruction

This is a dose ranging study of intranodal administration of autologous dendritic cells (DC) pulsed with tumor antigen class I peptides derived from MART-1 (26-35) (27L), gp100 (209-217 (210M), gp100 280-288 (288V), NY-ESO-1 157-165 (165V) and tyrosinase 207-215 as well as class II MART-1 (51-73), NY-ESO-1 (119-143), MAGE-3 (243-258) and tyrosinase (450-462) peptides preceded by Autologous Lymphocyte Infusion (ALI) and one of two doses of Fludarabine. The nine or ten amino acid peptides representing HLA-A2 restricted T cell epitopes of MART-1, gp100, NY-ESO-1 and tyrosinase will be pulsed onto autologous dendritic cells produced by incubation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained by apheresis with interleukin-4 (IL-4) and GM-CSF and pulsed with four helper peptides then matured with a cytokine cocktail including TNF-a, IL-6, IL-1b and PGE2. Melanoma antigen peptide-pulsed dendritic cells will be administered at a total dose of 10 million cells each for four intranodal injections to patients with chemotherapy-naïve metastatic melanoma. DC matured with a cytokine cocktail and pulsed with class I and II peptides will be injected intranodally, weekly for two doses, then every two weeks for two doses, for a total of four injections to each cohort.