Dendritic Cells (White Blood Cells) Vaccination for Advanced Melanoma

The purpose of this study is to investigate a method of using dendritic cells (a kind of white blood cell) as a vaccine to stimulate your own immune system to react to your melanoma cells.

Eligible patients that provide written informed consent will undergo apheresis to collect blood mononuclear cells for vaccine production. All patients will be given cyclophosphamide 300mg/m2 IV three days prior to vaccine dose #1 in order to deplete regulatory T cells. All patients will receive mature DC for each dose of vaccine. For each dose all patients will receive autologous dendritic cells pulsed with 2 gp100 melanoma peptides (G209-2M and G280-9V) plus up to an additional 10 unique melanoma tumor-specific peptides. All patients will receive booster doses with mature DC. The DC vaccine will be given intravenously every three weeks for a total of six vaccine doses. Peripheral blood (16 ml) will be taken weekly to monitor the immune response to each peptide by tetramer assay. Apheresis is repeated after vaccine dose #3 and dose #6 in order to collect PBMC for immune monitoring. Restaging is performed after three and six vaccine doses. Patients with stable disease or better (partial response/complete response) after six doses will be eligible to receive additional vaccinations as maintenance therapy every 2 months until progression.