RATIONALE: Vaccines made from peptides may make the body build an immune response to kill tumor cells.

PURPOSE: Phase I/II trial to study the effectiveness of vaccine therapy in treating patients who have stage IV, or relapsed malignant melanoma.

OBJECTIVES:

• Determine the safety of administering MART-1 peptide-pulsed dendritic cells to patients with stage IV or relapsed malignant melanoma.
• Determine the immunological and clinical responses in this patient population after this therapy.

OUTLINE: This is a dose-escalation study.

Patients undergo leukapheresis between days -14 to -8. Mononuclear cells are isolated, used to generate dendritic cells (DC), and then pulsed with MART-1 peptide. Patients are vaccinated with MART-1 peptide-pulsed DC either IV or intradermally on days 0, 14, and 28.

Cohorts of 3-6 patients receive escalating doses of MART-1 peptide-pulsed DC until the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) is determined. The MTD is defined as the dose preceding that at which 2 of 6 patients experience dose-limiting toxicity.

Patients are followed until death.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 18-24 patients will be accrued for this study.

• Biological: dendritic cell-MART-1 peptide vaccine
• Procedure: in vitro-treated peripheral blood stem cell transplantation

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Histologically confirmed malignant melanoma

  • Stage IV or relapsed
• HLA-A2.1-positive and MART-1 expression determined by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction or immunohistochemistry

• No uncontrolled CNS metastasis

  • CNS metastases treated with CNS irradiation to control local tumor growth allowed

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Age:

• 18 and over

Performance status:

• Karnofsky 70-100%

Life expectancy:

• Not specified

Hematopoietic:

• Hemoglobin greater than 9.0 g/dL (transfusion independent)
• Platelet count greater than 100,000/mm^3
• WBC greater than 3,000/mm^3
• Absolute neutrophil count greater than 1,000/mm^3

Hepatic:

• Not specified

Renal:

• Not specified

Cardiovascular:

• No prior evidence of New York Heart Association class III or IV heart disease

Pulmonary:

• No acute lung disease that would preclude anesthesia or surgery
• No dyspnea at rest

Other:

• Not pregnant or nursing
• Negative pregnancy test
• Fertile patients must use effective contraception
• No prior evidence of opportunistic infection
• No acute viral, bacterial, or fungal infection requiring specific therapy within the past 14 days
• No acute medical problems that may be considered an unacceptable anesthetic or operative risk
• No underlying condition that would preclude study therapy
• No allergies to study reagents
• No organ allografts
• Positive skin test to common antigens (i.e., tetanus and Candida)
• HIV negative

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

Biologic therapy:

• At least 30 days since prior immunotherapy

Chemotherapy:

• At least 30 days since prior chemotherapy
• No concurrent chemotherapy

Endocrine therapy:

• No concurrent corticosteroids

Radiotherapy:

• At least 30 days since prior radiotherapy

Surgery:

• At least 30 days since prior surgery

Other:

• No concurrent cyclosporine