Dendritic Cell Vaccines + Dasatinib for Metastatic Melanoma

Study Summary

Current therapeutic approaches available for patients with advanced-stage melanoma remain inadequate, and existing approaches including those involving immunotherapy with cytokines and/or targeted strategies have resulted in disappointingly low rates of durable and complete responses. Correcting immune dysfunction in advanced-stage melanoma patients using tyrosine-kinase inhibitor (TKI) such as dasatinib is proposed to relicense the patient's immune system to respond optimally to specific immunization. The integration of antigens expressed by tumor-associated blood vessel cells provides a means to selectively target the genetically-/antigenically-heterogeneous population of tumor cells in the advanced-stage melanoma patient. This is a single-center, prospective randomized Phase 2 trial evaluating the activity, safety and immune effects of dasatinib given in combination with an autologous type-1 polarized Dendritic Cell (αDC1) vaccine. The current trial represents a randomized Phase 2 study to determine the activity and safety of intradermal (id) administration of αDC1s loaded with a mixture of six TBVA-derived peptides at the time of, or immediately after, an initial therapy cycle with the TKI dasatinib. Dasatinib will be administered at the standard dose and schedule recommended by the FDA (70 mg BID). The autologous type-I DC vaccine will be administered either prior to, or concomitant with, the initiation of dasatinib administration. All patients will receive dasatinib at a starting dose of 70 mg twice daily by mouth in the outpatient setting approximately every 12 hours, at the same time each day. The DC vaccine will be administered by a single intradermal injection of approximately 10e7 cells, with all the DCs being administered on days 1 and 15 of every cycle on an outpatient basis in the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Research Center (UPCI-CTRC). Patients on Arm A will start dasatinib administration on cycle 2, day 1 (week 5), while t

Primary Outcome

Immune Response is defined as improved peripheral blood CD8+ T cell responses against 3 or more peptide epitopes after active vaccination with Type I-polarized autologous dendritic cell (αDC1) vaccine incorporating 6 tumor blood vessel-associated antigen (TBVA)-derived peptides. The measure of Immune Response for this study is expressed as a proportion of responders: The number of HLA-A2+ melanoma patients with improved peripheral blood CD8+ T cell responses (responders) divided by the total nu

Conditions Studied

Interventions

• DRUG Dasatinib
• BIOLOGICAL DC vaccine

Study Locations (1)