This study is designed to test the toxicity and potential benefit of immunotherapy in patients with recurrent, metastatic ovarian cancer for whom proven, effective therapeutic options are not available. Immunotherapy involves attempts to use the immune system or products of the immune system to fight cancer. Currently there is no FDA approved immunotherapy treatment for ovarian cancer One of the ways cancer patients have been treated in the past with immunotherapy is with an anti-tumor vaccine. This means that the patient's tumor is isolated and purified, then is treated with irradiation or the tumor is disrupted (so the tumor cells won't grow) and injected under the skin. The tumor cells are usually given with another agent called an adjuvant that is designed to stimulate the immune system resulting in recognition of the cancer cells by the immune system. It is hoped that this approach will then lead to destruction of other cancer cells elsewhere in the body by the cells of the immune system. This specific study is being conducted to determine the safety, side effects, and toxicity of an ovarian cancer cell vaccine that consists of tumor-pulsed dendritic cells. Another reason this study is being conducted is to determine if the vaccine causes an immune response in cancer patients. Patients on this study will also be monitored to determine if their tumor decreases in size following vaccination therapy. All patients who participate in this study will receive the tumor-pulsed dendritic cell vaccine. A few patients will receive a vaccine of their own cancer cells without the dendritic cells in addition to the vaccine of their own cancer cells pulsed onto dendritic cells. The purpose of treating this sub-group of patients is to compare the immunologic response in these patients to the two different vaccines. Different patients will receive different numbers of tumor-pulsed dendritic cells injected under their skin. Each individual patient will receive only one amount of tumor-pulsed dendritic cells.
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