Individualized synthetic peptide vaccines with GM-CSF in locally advanced melanoma patients

We report on 10 patients with resected American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage IIA-IIIC melanoma receiving individualized adjuvant peptide vaccinations derived from the melanosomal antigens MelanA/MARTI, gp100 and tyrosinase, according to patient tumor associated HLA restricted antigen expression, in combination with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF). Except for 1 patient, all patients had received systemic pretreatment with immunotherapy (n = 8), chemoimmunotherapy (n = 1), chemotherapy (n = 1), or cefalectin therapy (n = 1). Upon prior therapy, 7 of 10 patients had progressed with subcutaneous/cutaneous (n = 2), lymph node (n = 3), or subcutaneous/cutaneous and lymph node (n = 2) metastases, which were subsequently resected prior to vaccination. After a mean of 65 vaccination cycles, progression-free survival was 6 months (median, range 2-10). Five patients were relapse-free for 1+ up to 21+ months, 3 patients developed a solitary cutaneous metastasis, and 2 patients developed multiple metastases during vaccination. Overall, vaccine treatment was well tolerated, with no severe side-effects. Eight of 10 patients developed local delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) reactions to synthetic peptides after the first or second injection. In 2 patients, transient fever, nausea, diarrhea, and muscle pain of National Cancer Institute (NCI) Grade I occurred. In summary, individualized synthetic peptide vaccination, combined with GM-CSF, was feasible and warrants further clinical investigation.