Melanoma Vaccine Clinical Trial Yields Promising Results

Promising results have been reported from a cancer vaccine clinical trial where melanoma patients received injections of their own activated and targeted immune cells.

A group of 54 patients were included in the trial that took place between January 2001 and September 2007. Each patient contributed both immune dendritic cells from peripheral blood and tumor cells from melanomas that had metastasized. The melanoma cells were maintained as perpetually growing cell lines in tissue culture.

Each patient's dendritic cells were cultured in interleukin-4 (IL-4) and granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF). Thus activated, the dendritic cells were then targeted by exposing them to the culture of the patient's melanoma cells. The patient were then vaccinated with the activated immune cells three times a week and then monthly for five months for a total of up to eight injections.

Results published in the June 2009 issue of the journal Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals revealed that the treatment was well tolerated, with most patients experiencing only mild local pruritus and/or erythema. When evaluated after a median follow-up of 4.5 years (range 2.4-7.4), it was projected that the 30 surviving patients had a five-year survival rate of 54%. Eight patients experienced remarkable long-term, progression-free survival after completing the vaccine therapy, even though they had widely metastatic disease and/or repeated appearance of new metastases despite various therapies.

"The one-year and projected five-year survival rates of 85% and 54%, respectively, are remarkable for melanoma patients with documented metastatic disease,” said first author Dr. Robert O. Dillman, scientific director of the Hoag Cancer Center (Newport Beach, CA, USA). "This study is extremely encouraging and shows the potential these types of personalized cancer vaccines have for patients diagnosed with metastatic melanoma. There is continued interest in developing new therapies for melanoma patients with recurrent or distant metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis because there are no systemic therapies that can be relied upon to cure them. Patients with metastatic melanoma are at high risk for additional metastases and death.”

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