Patients receive V administrations with eventual additional ones depending on clinical outcome.

PBMC are isolated from buffy coats by density gradient centrifugation using Biocoll (BIOCHROM).

Leukapheresis will be performed on the following day.

Patients will undergo leukapheresis.

A HLA-A2 positive healthy donor undergoes leukapheresis.

HLA-A1 and/or HLA-A2 positive patients with stage III/IV melanoma undergo leukapheresis.

Patients will undergo lymphodepletion prior to vaccination and prior to adoptive transfer of autologous T cells.

CD8 T cells are purified using MACS cell separation.

The monocytes are cultured for five days to immature DC (imDC´s).

Differentiation of monocytes into dendritic cells is promoted by addition of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GMCSF 1000U/ml, Chemicon) and recombinant IL-4 (1000U/ml, R&D Systems) for 5 days.

Cells are subsequently separated into monocytes and lymphocytes by elutriation in a closed system (Elutra). The two most monocyte-rich fractions collected contained > 80% monocytes, the fraction richest in lymphocytes contained > 90% lymphocytes and viability in both fractions was > 95%.

Monocytes are isolated from PBMC using MACS anti-CD14 microbeads and a Midi-MACS® magnetic cell sorting device (both from Miltenyi Biotec, Bergisch- Gladbach,Germany).

Yeasts/spores are biotinylated using 10 mg/ml sulfo-NHS-LC-biotin (Sigma-Aldrich) in 50 mM NaHCO3 pH 8.5 for 2 hours at 4°C. The remaining reactive biotin molecules are inactivated by incubation in 100 mM Tris-HCl pH 8.0 for 40 minutes at 4°C. DCs are then treated with biotinylated spores/yeasts. After 1 hour, cells are permeabilized and labeled with aHLA-DR-FITC. After zymolyase treatment, intracellular yeasts/spores are detected using APC-labeled streptavidin and analyzed by flow cytometry.

After the centrifugation (10’ at 5000 rpm) the supernatant is transferred into a pre-spun (5’ at 1500 rpm) 50 ml Phase Lock Gel tube (Eppendorf 0032 005.330) and 4 ml of chloroform (Fischer BP1145-1) are added into the falcon.

Day 1: 4 x 10^6 293 FT in 10 ml DMEM (+10 % FCS (Tet-frei), +P/S) in a 10cm plate

Cells, lysated with a hypotonic solution (KCl 0.05%), are plated on YPD.

Indirect labeling method. Briefly, the reactive amine derivative of dUTP, 5-(3- aminoallyl)-2?-deoxyuridine 5?-triphosphate (Sigma) is incorporated into cDNA using the Superscript II reverse transcriptase (Invitrogen) and oligo dT (Invitrogen) and random examers (Roche). After synthesis of cDNA (2–3 h at 42 °C), RNA is hydrolyzed by addition of sodium hydroxide and EDTA to a final concentration of 100 mM and 10 mM, respectively and incubated at 65 °C for 10 min. The hydrolysis reaction is neutralized with 1 M HEPES. After removing free nucleotides by purif...

On day 5 cells are counted and pulsed with tumor antigen derived peptides (one per culture) at a concentration of 5 µg/mL in approximately 5 mL and at a cell density of 20 x 10e6/mL for 1 h.

CD1 molecules are refolded in vitro.

When the pellets are dry, they are resuspended in RNase-free water.