Study of Gene Modified Immune Cells in Patients With Advanced Melanoma

This is a two-stage phase II clinical trial with the combined primary endpoints to determine the safety, feasibility and anti-tumor activity of adoptive transfer of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) genetically engineered to express the alpha and beta chains of a high affinity T cell receptor (TCR) specific for the HLA-A\*0201-restricted MART-1 melanoma tumor antigen to patients with locally advanced or metastatic melanoma. This gene transfer will be facilitated by a retroviral vector pseudotyped with a gibbon ape leukemia virus (GaLV) envelope. The two transgenes are linked by a picornavirus 2A sequence. Their expression is driven by the retroviral long terminal repeat (LTR). Patients with MART-1-positive locally advanced or metastatic melanoma who are HLA-A\*0201-positive, and HIV, hepatitis B and C seronegative, will receive a non-myeloablative but lymphocyte depleting chemotherapy conditioning regimen consisting of cyclophosphamide and fludarabine, and then receive the adoptive transfer of autologous PBMC transduced with the MSGV1-F5AfT2AB retroviral vector, which expresses a high affinity TCR for the MART-1 melanoma antigen (MART-1 F5 TCR). The cell dose will be up to 10\^9 autologous PBMC transduced with the MSGV1-F5AfT2AB retroviral vector. The transgenic T cells will be infused fresh on the day of harvest as done in the last three patients within this protocol, prior to which, thawed cryopreserved cells were infused. Following adoptive cell transfer, patients will receive MART-1.26-35 peptide-pulsed dendritic cell (DC) vaccines and low dose interleukin-2 (IL-2). The MART-1 F5 TCR was provided by Dr. Stephen A. Rosenberg from the Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute (NCI). The MART-1 F5 TCR is derived from the DMF5 tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) clone, and was selected from several MART-1-specific TCRs because of its high affinity and biological activity. This TCR delivered by the same retroviral vector is currently in clinical testing at the Surgery Branch/NCI. Both the NCI clinical trial and the trial at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) are based on the same retrovirus expressing the MART-1 F5 TCR used to transduce whole PBMC and re-infused to patients after a non-myeloablative but lymphodepleting chemotherapy conditioning regimen. Major differences between both clinical trials include the shorter ex vivo expansion of TCR transduced PBMC, the use of MART-126-35 peptide pulsed DC and the use of positron imaging tomography (PET) for non-invasive imaging of adoptively transferred TCR transgenic cells in the UCLA clinical trial. The primary endpoints will be safety, feasibility and objective tumor response. The phase II clinical trial design will have two treatment stages following a Simon optimal two-stage clinical phase II clinical trial design 1. The clinical trial will have an initial stage with 8 patients followed by a second stage with up to 22 patients. Safety will be determined in stage one, and if 3 out of 8 patients have MART-1 F5 TCR-induced dose limiting toxicities (DLT), then further accrual will not be warranted. Feasibility will be also determined in the first stage, and if 3 out of 8 patients cannot receive the intended cellular therapies, or if they result in suboptimal TCR transgenic cell in vivo persistence, further accrual will not be warranted to the protocol as currently designed. Objective tumor responses will be determined by RECIST objective response criteria with a design to rule out a 10% response rate as the null hypothesis, and a 35% response rate as the alternative hypothesis. With this statistical design, if 2 or more of 8 patients in stage one have an objective response, the study will proceed to stage two and accrue a total of 22 patients. If 5 or more patients in the overall study have a complete response (CR) or partial response (PR), which combined result in the objective response rate, the study will be declared positive. Secondary study endpoints are transgenic T cell persistence in humans and their ability to home to MART-1 positive melanoma metastasis. Analysis will be performed by sampling of peripheral blood and tumor deposits for T cell persistence and by non-invasive metabolic imaging using PET scans.