Administration as a Biological Adjuvant in Clinically-Staged, Resectable Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

The application of immunotherapeutic strategies that target the most potent antigen presenting cell, the dendritic cell (DC), are likely to substantially increase the magnitude of the anti-tumor immune response. Although there are issues of activation state and antigen load, mechanisms to increase the number of DCs available to the immune system are among the first steps in development of affective DC based immunotherapeutic strategies. The Central Hypothesis of our study is: Administration of Granulocyte Macrophage Colony Stimulating Factor (GM-CSF) to patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma will result in enhance recruitment of DCs to the sentinel lymph node, into the peripheral blood, and/or tumor site. We propose performing a phase I, dose escalation, clinical trial of systemic and intra-tumoral GM-CSF administration for the treatment of pancreatic adenocarcinoma. This trial will be designed to assess toxicity and immunologic effects, principally dendritic cell recruitment. Patients with resectable pancreatic adenocarcinoma by clinical staging criteria will be eligible for enrollment. The trial we propose is a phase I clinical trial of the addition of GM-CSF as a biological adjuvant to standard care for patients with potentially resectable pancreatic adenocarcinoma.