Trivalent Ganglioside Vaccine With Immunological Adjuvant or Immunological Adjuvant Alone in Metastatic Sarcoma Patients Who Are Rendered Disease Free

This study is a Phase II randomized, double-blind, multi-center study of a trivalent ganglioside vaccine plus the immunological adjuvant OPT-821 (Arm A) versus OPT-821 alone (Arm B) for patients with metastatic sarcoma at initial presentation or with relapsed disease who have been rendered disease-free following either surgical resection or multi-modality therapy. The primary aim of this study is to demonstrate the efficacy of vaccine therapy over non-specific immune therapy. Another aim of this study is to obtain sufficient data to further the development of this specific vaccine therapy as well as guide future study designs for therapeutic cancer vaccines in general. To be eligible, patients must have histologically confirmed sarcoma, must be clinically free of disease after surgery or multimodality therapy, and must be within 8 weeks of completion of such therapy. Given the limited data regarding ganglioside expression in Ewing sarcoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, and gastrointestinal stromal tumors, patients with these sarcoma subtypes with the exception of pleomorphic/anaplastic rhabdomyosarcoma will be excluded. Patients must have a history of distant metastatic disease; patients with locally recurrent disease only will not be eligible, as these patients demonstrate a different natural history from those with metastatic disease. All treatment will be performed in the outpatient setting. Patients will be randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive a total of 10 treatments of either the vaccine plus OPT-821 (Arm A) or OPT-821 alone (Arm B). Treatment will be administered on Visit Weeks 1, 2, 3, 8, 16, 28, 40, 52, 68, and 84. All patients will receive 150 mcg of OPT-821.