RATIONALE: Vaccines made from a person's cancer cells may make the body build an immune response to kill tumor cells. Combining vaccine therapy with interleukin-2 may be a more effective treatment for follicular lymphoma . PURPOSE: Phase I trial to study the effectiveness of vaccine therapy plus interleukin-2 in treating patients who have stage III, stage IV, or recurrent follicular lymphoma.
OBJECTIVES: * Assess the safety of immunotherapy with autologous tumor cell vaccine and interleukin-2 in patients with stage III, IV, or recurrent follicular lymphoma. * Determine the clinical response of patients treated with this regimen. * Assess the immune response of patients treated with this vaccine. OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to prior therapy (no prior biologic therapy or chemotherapy for lymphoma vs prior prednisone, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, and etoposide (PACE) chemotherapy). Patients without prior therapy are further stratified according to accessibility of lymph nodes (easily accessible (stratum Ia) vs not easily accessible (stratum Ib)). All patients undergo lymph node biopsy to obtain tissue for vaccine manufacture. Treatment begins approximately 1 month after biopsy. * Stratum Ia: Patients receive autologous tumor cell vaccine and interleukin-2 (IL-2) intranodally and subcutaneously (SC) on day 1. * Stratum Ib and stratum II: Patients receive autologous tumor cell vaccine and IL-2 SC on day 1. Treatment in each stratum continues every 4 weeks for a maximum of 5 courses in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Patients are followed at 1 and 4 months, every 3 months for 1 year, and every 6 months thereafter until relapse or progression of disease. PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 20 patients (10 per stratum) will be accrued for this study within 1.5-2 years.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Purpose
TREATMENT
Medicine Branch
Bethesda, Maryland, United States
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