The purpose of this study is to evaluate the administration, safety and immunologic effectiveness of an experimental vaccine for colorectal cancer patients.
Dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccination, usually administered by a traditional intradermal route, is a new treatment option for cancer patients. While the previous DC-based vaccination trials have shown the safety of this approach and its ability to induce objective clinical responses, the overall efficacy of DC-based vaccines is still disappointing (Rosenberg et al., 2004). We hypothesize that the two likely causes of such limited clinical activity are: A) suboptimal type of DCs used as a vaccine and B) suboptimal modes of use of such vaccines that do not allow the vaccinated patients to fully benefit from DC biology. We will conduct a pilot evaluation of the therapeutic vaccination with DC1s loaded with autologous tumor material, in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer that have been resected to no or minimal evidence of disease.The proposed evaluation of the novel intralymphatic route of DC-based vaccination will allow us to administer the vaccine in a way that is more physiologic with respect to the kinetics of antigen appearance to the lymph nodes and is feasible to be performed in repetitive fashion, without damaging local lymph nodes.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
15
Each patient will receive four courses of vaccination with 2 million tumor-loaded DCs at week 0, 4, 8, and 12. A course consists of 4 intradermal injections once a day for 4 days.
Each patient will receive four courses of vaccination with 2 million tumor-loaded DCs at week 0, 4, 8, and 12. A course consists of 1 intranodal injection.
Each patient will receive four courses of vaccination with 2 million tumor-loaded DCs at week 0, 4, 8, and 12. A course consists of a 4-day intralymphatic infusion.
University of Cancer Institute
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
The primary endpoint of this study is to evaluate the feasibility and safety of semi-continuous intralymphatic vaccination dendritic cells.
Time frame: 4 to 14 weeks
The secondary objective of this study is to evaluate the immunity results from either single injections or semi-continuous infusion, intradermal or intranodal, administered immunization with the DC vaccine for colorectal cancer (CRC) patients.
Time frame: 4 to 14 weeks
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