Poly-ICLC (Hiltonol®) Vaccine In Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma

Prior treatment

• Serious concurrent infection or medical illness, which would jeopardize the ability of the patient to receive Poly-ICLC with reasonable safety.
• Persistent toxicity from recent therapy that has not sufficiently resolved in the judgment of the study physician.
• Subject has had an allogeneic tissue/solid organ transplant.
• Concomitant comorbidities that are uncontrolled that would preclude the patient from being a surgical candidate including uncontrolled CHF, diabetes or heart disease

Other illness

• History of any pulmonary process that precludes a biopsy to be done safely.
• Known severe pulmonary hypertension; having a history of pulmonary hypertension or an estimated PA systolic pressure of \>60mmHg as measured by tricuspid regurgitation on preoperative echocardiogram.
• Subject has an active infection requiring therapy.
• Subject has active autoimmune disease that has required systemic treatment within the past 2 years (eg, with use of disease modifying agents, corticosteroids or immunosuppressive drugs). Replacement therapy (eg, thyroxine, insulin, or physiologic corticosteroid replacement therapy for adrenal or pituitary insufficiency, etc.) is not considered a form of systemic treatment.
• Subject has known active Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C or tuberculosis. Active Hepatitis B is defined as a known positive HBsAg result. Active Hepatitis C is defined by a known positive Hep C Ab result and known quantitative HCV ribonucleic acid (RNA) results greater than the lower limits of detection of the assay.

Lab values

• AIDS defined as a CD4 count less than 200 in the context of HIV seropositivity or chronically is taking immunosuppressive medication such as steroids or transplant related medications.
• Women with a positive serum or urine pregnancy test at baseline, or are pregnant or breastfeeding.
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Other

• Subject unable to cooperate in terms of maintaining position during the biopsy procedure.

• Biopsy proven MPM
  • If biopsied at an outside institution, must have a tissue block sample available
• Deemed to be surgically resectable by a dedicated thoracic surgeon.
• Acceptable hematologic, renal and liver function as follows:
  • Absolute neutrophil count \> 1000/mm3
  • Platelets \> 50,000/mm3,
  • Creatinine ≤ 2.5 mg/dl,
  • Total bilirubin ≤ 1.5 mg/dl, unless patient has known Gilberts syndrome
  • Transaminases ≤ 2 times above the upper limits of the institutional normal.
  • INR\<1.6 if off of anticoagulation. Patients on anticoagulation therapy with an INR\>1.6 may be enrolled at the discretion of the investigator if they have not had any episodes of severe hemorrhage and if the site to be injected is fully surrounded by pleura where achieving homeostasis would be complicated.
• Patient must be able to provide informed consent
• Subject is willing to adhere to the study visit schedule and other protocol requirements.