Vaccine therapy of malignant melanoma

Malignant melanoma is a lethal disease for which the only curative therapy of proven benefit is complete surgical resection for early stage disease. Melanoma is a disease that is usually resistant to systemic therapy, with dacarbazine and interleukin-2 being the only 2 United States Food and Drug Administration approved drugs for advanced disease, and interferon alfa-2b the only one approved therapy for adjuvant treatment of high-risk disease. Evidence has shown that melanoma cells can be immunogenic prompting extensive basic and clinical research attempting to develop effective antimelanoma vaccine therapies. In this review, we concentrate on clinical results of vaccine trials in patients with melanoma.