Subjects are invited to take part in a research study which is looking at an immunization strategy after an autologous stem cell transplant. Subjects are eligible to undergo this study because they have a disease that is treatable and potentially curative through bone marrow transplant. Although this remains an effective way of treating this disease, we are looking at ways to improve the outcome. One way we are looking at to improve the outcome of transplantation is to try to immunize patients after transplant with the hope that some day an immunization strategy can be used to improve the overall cure rate. Ultimately, we would like to immunize patients against their own cancer cells. However, as a first step we are seeing if we can enhance the immune response to a simple protein after bone marrow transplant. The way we are trying to do this is to see if we can boost subjects' immune response by using a specific cell called the dendritic cell as a way of providing a powerful stimulus to the immune response. The way we will perform this study is after patients have undergone an autologous transplant, they will be immunized either with a protein or with the protein that has been pulsed on this specific cell called the dendritic cell. Subjects will be randomly assigned to receive one or the other treatment. We will attempt to see if one of the treatments is better than another. That is, if the immunization with the dendritic cell is better than just with the immunization with the standard protein. We are examining how subjects' immune system will respond to two different types of vaccinations. This is a preliminary study from which we hope to proceed to an immunization strategy using patients' own tumor cells.
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