Trial of Melaxin Cancer Vaccine Plus Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) to Treat Malignant Melanoma

Chemotherapy and immunotherapy are the main therapies for metastatic melanoma with the hope of prolonging survival. The ideal immunotherapy would consist of the professional antigen-presenting cell, the dendritic cell, with the entire repertoire of tumor antigens inside. The best way to achieve this is by creating an autologous hybrid fusion cell of the dendritic cell and tumor cell. In this study, melanoma tumor tissue surgically removed from the patient will be disassociated into single cells, irradiated and fused to dendritic cells produced by culturing the patient's blood monocytes. Prior to the electrofusion procedure, the tumor cells are stained red and the dendritic cells are stained green. After fusion, the uniquely colored fused cells, or dendritomas, are separated from the unfused cells by use of a fluorescence activated cell sorter. This highly purified population is then divided into 4 doses containing 250,000 dendritomas each and frozen. Each dose is thawed, diluted to 1 milliliter (ml) with Sterile Saline for Injection containing 5 percent (%) human serum albumin and administered subcutaneously (SQ) over a lymph node bed to the patient once every 4 weeks. A separate injection of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) is administered in the same area within 10 minutes of the dendritoma injection. The safety and efficacy of the therapy will be evaluated in 25 patients.