Long-term survival and long-lived immune memory in patients with metastatic melanoma vaccinated with melanoma-antigen loaded dendritic cells.

e19018 Background: Clinical trials have demonstrated the safety of cancer antigen-loaded dendritic cells (DCs) as well as clinical and immune responses. We showed that antigen-pulsed DCs administered to patients with metastatic melanoma are immunogenic and can induce durable objective clinical responses even in patients who failed previous therapy. Here we analyzed long term immunological outcomes in our cohort of vaccinated patients. Methods: Between March 1999 and February 2005 sixty four patients with metastatic melanoma were treated with DCs vaccines in the course of four phase I/IIa clinical trials. DCs were generated either from CD34+ hematopoietic progenitors or from blood monocytes. Forty nine (49) HLA-A*0201+ patients received vaccines pulsed with melanoma antigen derived peptides (MART-1, MAGE-3, TYR and gp100). Twenty one patients received DCs loaded with killed allogeneic tumors regardless of their HLA type. KLH was used as a helper antigen and, in HLA- A*0201+ patients, Flu-M1 peptide was use...