Vaccine Being Tested At IU School of Medicine Holds Promise For The Deadly Cancer Melanoma

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Indiana University School of Medicine is participating in a $26.8 million international clinical study of a vaccine for the skin cancer melanoma. The study could result in the first commercially available vaccine for the treatment of a cancer.

Nearly 800 Hoosiers develop melanoma each year and approximately 150 will die of the disease because their cancer has advanced beyond the point of effective treatment. Now these patients may have another chance to beat the deadly disease if the melanoma vaccine proves effective. Researchers say it also may hold promise for other forms of cancer.

The IU Interdisciplinary Melanoma Program is participating in the five-year study being conducted at 34 sites in the United States, Canada, several European countries and Australia.

The project is funded by the National Cancer Institute. The principal investigational site is the John Wayne Cancer Institute at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif.

Jeffrey Wagner, M.D., surgical director of the IU Cancer Center’s Interdisciplinary Melanoma Program, said the study holds promise for the 40,000 people nationwide who develop melanoma each year.

“Preliminary reports have found that the vaccine raises a strong immune response in more than 42 percent of the Stage IV patients receiving it,” Dr. Wagner said. “If this study progresses as anticipated, the new vaccine could be available for treating State IV melanoma patients within a couple of years.”

Participants in the IU study will have State IV or advanced disease, meaning the melanoma has metastasized (spread) to other organs. Between 10 and 15 patients will be enrolled in the study over the next three years. Each participant will be receive multiple vaccinations with either the vaccine or a placebo. The trial is a randomized study comparing the vaccine to placebo in Stage IV patients who have had all sites of melanoma metastases removed.

The vaccine is created from weakened, irradiated melanoma cells collected from other patients and is designed to stimulate the body’s immune system. The vaccine is unique, Wagner says, because it removes all detectable melanoma cells, allowing the body’s immune system to recover; then the vaccine stimulates the immune system to attack the markers on the melanoma cells.

“This is a novel approach to a disease with no satisfactory solution at this time,” Dr. Wagner said. “Currently, treatment for patients with Stage IV melanoma is limited to surgery and aggressive chemotherapy which doesn’t improve their survival and is very toxic.”

Melanoma is responsible for 75 percent of all skin cancer deaths. Skin cancer is the most common kind of cancer, but usually is slow growing and has a 95 percent cure rate if caught early.

Unlike some forms of skin cancer, melanoma is insidious, frequently lying undetected for months or metastasizing early in its development and later appearing in multiple sites.

For additional information on the melanoma clinical research program which will begin at IU by early summer, call 317-278-0370.

Contact: Mary Hardin
317-274-7722
mhardin@iupui.edu

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