DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Histologically confirmed malignancy, including, but not limited to, any of the following:

  • Rhabdomyosarcoma and other soft tissue sarcoma
  • Ewing's sarcoma family of tumors
  • Osteosarcoma
  • Neuroblastoma
  • Wilms tumor
  • Hodgkin's lymphoma
  • Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
• Measurable or evaluable disease
• Must have relapsed after or failed to respond to prior standard therapy
• No known curative therapy or therapy proven to prolong survival with an acceptable quality of life exists
• No primary or metastatic hepatic tumors

• No primary or untreated metastatic CNS tumors

  • Patients with prior CNS metastases must meet the following criteria:

    • Metastases have been treated with surgery and/or radiotherapy
    • Clinically stable as evidenced by no requirement for corticosteroids
    • No evolving neurologic deficits and no change in residual brain abnormalities without specific therapy within the past 6 weeks

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

• Karnofsky performance status (PS) 50-100% (patients > 10 years of age) OR Lansky PS 50-100% (patients ≤ 10 years of age)
• Absolute granulocyte count ≥ 1,000/mm^3
• Platelet count ≥ 75,000/mm^3 (transfusion independent)
• Hemoglobin ≥ 8 g/dL
• AST and ALT ≤ 2.5 times upper limit of normal
• Bilirubin (direct) normal
• Creatinine clearance ≥ 60 mL/min OR creatinine normal
• Ejection fraction > 40% by MUGA scan or ECHO OR shortening fraction > 27% by ECHO
• Not pregnant or nursing
• Negative pregnancy test
• Fertile patients must use effective contraception during and for 60 days (females) or 30 days (males) after completion of study therapy
• No history of congestive heart failure
• No clinically significant unrelated systemic illness (e.g., serious infection or organ dysfunction) that would preclude study treatment
• No history of any infection requiring hospitalization or parenteral antibiotics within the past 2 weeks
• No co-existing medical illness that would place the patient at undue risk
• No known HIV infection
• No immune deficiency
• No hepatitis B or C

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

• See Disease Characteristics
• Recovered from prior therapy
• At least 4 weeks since prior radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or monoclonal antibody therapy (6 weeks for nitrosoureas [e.g., lomustine or carmustine])
• At least 7 days since prior biological therapy or investigational therapy
• At least 72 hours since prior and no concurrent colony-stimulating growth factors (e.g., filgrastim [G-CSF], sargramostim [GM-CSF], or epoetin alfa)
• At least 3 months since prior autologous stem cell transplantation
• No prior allogeneic bone marrow transplantation
• No other concurrent immunotherapy or chemotherapy
• No concurrent immunosuppressant therapy (prednisone ≤ 10 mg/day or dexamethasone ≤ 4 mg/day allowed)
• No other concurrent investigational therapy