RATIONALE: Vaccines made from a person's cancer cells may make the body build an immune response to kill tumor cells. Interleukin-2 may stimulate a person's white blood cells to kill cancer cells. Melanoma vaccine plus interleukin-2 may kill more cancer cells.

PURPOSE: Phase II trial to study the effectiveness of vaccine therapy plus interleukin-2 in treating patients who have advanced melanoma.

OBJECTIVES:

• Determine clinical response rates in patients with advanced melanoma treated with gp100:209-217(210M) melanoma vaccine and low-dose interleukin-2.
• Assess response duration and progression-free intervals in these patients receiving this treatment.

OUTLINE: Patients receive gp100:209-217(210M) emulsified in Montanide ISA-51 subcutaneously (SC) on day 1 and interleukin-2 SC on days 1-5 and 8-13. Courses repeat every 21 days in the absence of unacceptable toxicity or disease progression. Patients with a complete response (CR) receive 3 additional courses after achieving CR.

Patients are followed every 9 weeks for 3 years or until disease recurrence.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 25-50 patients will be accrued for this study within 3.5 years.

• Biological: aldesleukin
• Biological: gp100 antigen
• Biological: incomplete Freund's adjuvant

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Histologically or cytologically confirmed cutaneous melanoma with clinical evidence of distant, metastatic, unresectable regional lymphatic, or extensive in-transit recurrent disease
• HLA-A2*0201 positive by genotyping

• Measurable disease as defined by the following:

  • At least 1 lesion accurately measured in at least 1 dimension
  • At least 20 mm by conventional techniques OR
  • At least 10 mm by spiral CT scan

  • Lesions considered intrinsically nonmeasurable include:

    • Bone lesions
    • Leptomeningeal disease
    • Ascites
    • Pleural/pericardial effusion
    • Inflammatory breast disease
    • Lymphangitis cutis/pulmonis
    • Abdominal masses not confirmed and followed by imaging techniques
    • Cystic lesions
    • Lesions situated in a previously irradiated area
• No ocular or mucosal melanoma
• No prior or concurrent liver or brain metastases

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Age:

• 18 and over

Performance status:

• ECOG 0-1

Life expectancy:

• Not specified

Hematopoietic:

• Platelet count at least 100,000/mm^3
• Hemoglobin at least 10 g/dL

Hepatic:

• LDH normal
• Bilirubin normal
• AST no greater than 2.5 times upper limit of normal

Renal:

• Creatinine normal

Cardiovascular:

• No congestive heart failure, angina, or symptomatic cardiac arrhythmia
• No myocardial infarction within the past 6 months

Pulmonary:

• No severe chronic pulmonary disease

Other:

• Not pregnant or nursing
• Fertile patients must use effective contraception
• No primary or secondary immunodeficiency or autoimmune disease
• No currently active second malignancy (e.g., patient has completed therapy and is considered unlikely to have recurrence within 1 year) other than nonmelanoma skin cancer

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

Biologic therapy:

• At least 4 weeks since prior immunotherapy
• No prior interleukin-2
• No prior whole cell or gp100:209-217(210M)-targeted melanoma vaccine
• No other concurrent cytokines or growth factors

Chemotherapy:

• At least 4 weeks since prior chemotherapy

Endocrine therapy:

• At least 1 month since prior systemic corticosteroids
• No concurrent systemic, inhaled, or topical corticosteroids

Radiotherapy:

• See Disease Characteristics

Surgery:

• Not specified

Other:

• At least 1 month since other prior immunosuppressive medication
• No antihypertensive medications from 1 day prior until 2 days after first course