Phase II Cancer Vaccine Trial for Patients With Follicular Lymphoma

The clinical protocol is based on the rationale that the immune system has been developed to combat infectious disease. To mimic the environment in infected tissue, selected tumor-affected lymph nodes are treated locally with a single dose of 8 Gy radiotherapy and injected with therapeutic antibody (anti-CD20/Rituximab). Later, dendritic cells (DC) are injected into the damaged tumor tissue together with a stimulatory cytokine (GM-CSF) to initiate an immune response. Patients with untreated or relapsed stage III/IV follicular lymphoma not in need of standard therapy receive intra-tumoral injections of low-dose anti-CD20 antibodies (5 mg) on days 1 and 3 and local radiotherapy on day 2. On days 4 and 5, dendritic cells generated from monocytes isolated from the patients blood are injected into the site together with the stimulatory cytokine GM-CSF administered subcutaneously. Additional lymph nodes are treated similarly after 2 and 4 weeks. The treatment is thus performed three times, targeting different lymphoma nodes. The primary aims are to induce tumor-specific immune responses and clinical responses.