Vaccine Therapy in Treating Patients With Breast Cancer

OBJECTIVES: * To determine if the GP2 peptide/GM-CSF vaccine reduces the recurrence rate in HLA-A2-positive, HER2/neu-positive, node-positive, or high-risk node-negative breast cancer patients randomized to receive the vaccine versus the immunoadjuvant, sargramostim (GM-CSF), alone. * To determine if the AE37 peptide/GM-CSF vaccine reduces the recurrence rate in HLA-A2-negative, HER2/neu-positive, node-positive or high-risk node-negative breast cancer patients randomized to receive the vaccine versus the immunoadjuvant, GM-CSF, alone. * To monitor the invitro and invivo immunologic responses to the vaccines and correlate these responses with the clinical outcomes. * To monitor for any unexpected toxicities with the vaccines. OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to nodal status. Patients are randomized to 1 of 4 treatment arms. * Arm I: HLA-A2-positive patients receive GP2 peptide/GM-CSF vaccine intradermally (ID) every 3-4 weeks for a total of up to 6 inoculations. * Arm II: HLA-A2-positive patients receive solely GM-CSF ID * Arm III: HLA-A2-negative patients receive AE37 peptide/GM-CSF vaccine ID every 3-4 weeks for a total of up to 6 inoculations. * Arm IV: HLA-A2-negative patients receive solely GM-CSF ID After completion of study therapy, patients are followed every 3 months for the first 24 months and then every 6 months for an additional 36 months. Booster inoculations are administered at 12, 18, 24, and 30 months from the date of patients' enrollment into the study. One booster inoculation is administered at each timepoint (+/- 2 weeks) and will be the same inoculation (vaccine or GM-CSF only) as what patients received during their regular inoculation series.