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Trials on agents to treat melanoma to begin at Hollings Clinical trials on a combination of two biological agents to treat stage III melanoma will begin next week at the Hollings Cancer Center. Surgery is usually successful in treating patients with primary tumors, but when the disease spreads to the lymph nodes (Stage III) or beyond, there is a higher risk for recurrent disease. In recent years, a variety of biological therapies to boost, direct or restore the body’s natural defenses against the disease have shown the most promise.  One of these biological agents, interferon-Alfa, has proven to be the most effective treatment for melanoma following the removal of lymph nodes or skin involved with the tumor. This agent has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and has been shown to improve the disease-free interval in melanoma beyond what surgery alone can achieve. A therapeutic melanoma vaccine, known as melacine, consisting of mechanically disrupted melanoma cells combined with an experimental material that can boost the immune response called DETOX-PC has been under investigation since 1985 by  Malcolm S. Mitchell, M.D., at the Karmanos Cancer Center in Detroit. There have been encouraging results from clinical trials on this vaccine. The current research, involving MUSC and 22 other centers nationally, is designed to find out whether a treatment combining the therapeutic melanoma vaccine, Melacine, combined with the interferon-alfa-2b can prevent the recurrence of melanoma better than a higher dose of the interferon-alfa-2b alone. “Our hope is that we may be able to improve survival with a combination of two apparently effective agents beyond what each one may be able to accomplish individually,” said Frank Brescia, M.D., a Medical University oncologist and principal investigator for the MUSC site. There are already 424 patients enrolled in the study at the other sites, and patients will be able to enroll until December 2001.  Melanoma strikes people of all ages, all races, all economic levels and both sexes. It is already the most common cancer for women 25 to 29 and the second most common cancer for women 30 to 34. The incidence of melanoma is increasing steadily each year, particularly in sunny climates, but also in the Northern parts of the United States and Europe. An American’s lifetime risk of developing melanoma is about one in 75.