A man who had advanced deadly skin cancer was completely cured with an experimental treatment. However, the case was the small study's only definite success. The treatment involved immunotherapy, which consists of exciting the immune system to kill the cancer on its own.

The patient, of whom the researchers lost track after two years, was injected with his own cloned immune system T cells. The 52 year old subsequently was into complete remission after initially being given less than a year to live.

However, the other eight patients in the study were not as lucky.

The results were published in the June 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Study co-author Dr. Cassian Yee of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle reminded that no matter how spectacular the result was, it is still just one patient and a long road lies ahead in developing an effective treatment who would work on most melanoma patients.

Melanoma is the cancer which affects melanocytes, cells located in the bottom layer of the skin's epidermis and in the middle layer of the eye.

This means that while melanoma is almost always skin cancer, the tumor can also be located in the eye, and, sometimes, in the bowel.

When distant metastasis occurs in melanoma, the disease is considered incurable, with a median survival of 6 to 12 months. The patient in the study had metastasis tumors in the lungs and a lymph node.

However, following a single two-hour dose of immune system cells, and after sixty days of allowing them to destroy the cancer, the man was found cancer-free.