TAMPA, Fla. -- Melanoma is a deadly form of skin cancer. Chemotherapy and other standard treatments are not very effective in treating the disease, but a new therapy is being tried on patients after it helped 80 percent of mice with melanoma. Here's why patients are "shocked" by how this therapy works.

Joe Picone is a chef. But lately, many of his meals are consumed in this hospital cafeteria where he's a cancer patient. Picone went to the doctor for what he thought was a wart on the bottom of his foot. Turns out it was stage IV melanoma.

"You got to play the hand that God dealt you, and I'm playing the hand in the best way I could," Picone says. There is no cure, so he agreed to be the first human to try an experimental treatment. "Having cancer, stage IV, you kinda reach for anything you can get so I was like, 'OK.'"

Joe had electroporation. Oncologist Adil Daud, M.D., says it's a promising new gene therapy treatment. "Electroporation has never been used in human beings for any type of gene therapy before," Dr. Daud, of Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., tells Ivanhoe.

During the treatment, a device is placed in the tumor and delivers electricity, which causes pores to form. The pores allow an immune boosting gene to get inside the tumor.

"It will be like a flag that says danger or warning to the immune system and cause the immune system to destroy that tumor," Dr. Daub says.

Picone is a former athlete and doesn't consider himself a wimp, but he says the treatment was tough. "It was like an electric shock you know. They held me down." Each shock lasts six seconds. Since his treatment, no new lesions have formed.

Dr. Daud says several of his patients have also had their tumors shrink. He also says so far, no adverse side effects have been reported other than pain during the treatment. The treatment has been performed on seven patients to date in the United States, but is also being studied in Europe. Dr. Daud hopes the therapy will one day help other cancers, too.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Jean Johnson Moffitt Cancer Center 12902 Magnolia Dr. MBC-PR Tampa, FL 33612 (813) 975-7896 johnsojc@moffitt.usf.edu http://www.moffitt.usf.edu