Therapeutic TriMix-dendritic cell vaccination in melanoma patients with and without evaluable disease.

Melanoma is a devastating cancer for which there is an unmet need for new treatment options. Therapeutic vaccination against melanoma associated antigens has demonstrated anti-tumor activity in a small minority of patients. We developed a new and more immunogenic melanoma vaccine that is composed of autologous dentritic cells electroporated with TriMix maturation mix and mRNA encoding fusion proteins of the targeting sequence of DC.LAMP and four melanoma associated antigens. Encouraging immunogenicity and anti-tumor activity have been documented in a small pilot cohort study. We propose to perform an exploratory randomized immunogenicity study in high-risk melanoma patients and a two-stage phase II efficacy study in patients with evaluable disease