Autologous DC are pulsed with the apoptotic allogenic prostate carcinoma cell line LNCap to produce the vaccine for patients with advanced prostate carcinoma..

Transfection of immature DCs with different constructs encoding for the oncogene Her-2/neu and as control PSA using the technology of Amaxa biosystems or an adeno virus Her-2 full length construct.

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

Leukapheresis products from cancer patients is used as a starting material for monocyte enrichment by elutriation technology with ELUTRA® (Gambro).

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

The primary objective of this trial is to determine toxicity and feasibility of treatment of patients with advanced melanoma with DC vaccine and adoptive transfer.

The patients will be vaccined with the DC vaccine that consists of monocyte derived DC loaded with tumor lysate generated from the excised lesion.

The T cell transfer will consist of T cells expanded by co-culture with tumor lysate loaded DC.

Generation of tumor lysate loaded DC.

The DC vaccine will consist of monocyte derived DC loaded with tumor lysate generated from the excised lesion.

Sources for tumor antigens as well as monocytes and T cells will be isolated from the leukapheresis product by elutriation.

Patients will undergo leukapheresis.

Patients will undergo surgical removal of a metastatic lesion.

Transfection of CD40L-encoding RNA along with the tumor RNA payload.

This step of the new maturation protocol involves maturation with TNF-alpha, IFN-gamma, and PGE2.

Monitoring of immunological responses elicited by the DC vaccine and transferred T cells during the clinical trial

Treatment induced T cell responses will be evaluated by flow cytometry based methods (T cell phenotype, proliferation, perforin degranulation) and cytokine detection (Elispot, Elisa). The patients will be monitored for safety and toxicity of the treatment and for clinical response to immunotherapy.

Such prepared DC will be used also to expand T cells (isolated during the elutriation) for subsequent adoptive transfer.

Patients with stage III or stage IV melanoma will undergo surgical resection of a melanotic lesion.