AURORA, Colo. -- When doctors diagnosed Gerard Meluso with pancreatic cancer last month, he decided to fight back.

“After that first shock moment, one of the very next thoughts that goes through your mind is that you don’t want to leave your family behind,” Meluso said. “That’s the tough part.”

So for his wife and four children, the Colorado Springs resident enrolled in a groundbreaking medical trial at the University of Colorado Hospital.

The idea behind the experimental technique is to shrink the tumor with very concentrated, very localized medication.

“The medication is actually a gene therapy,” said Dr. Raj Shah, associate professor of gastroenterology at the University of Colorado Hospital. “It’s been used in other forms of cancer such as esophageal cancer and melanoma.”

The drug, called Tumor Necrosis Factor, causes serious side effects when injected through the veins, so this experimental method goes straight to the source.

In the first phase, once a week, doctors use an endoscope through the mouth to the stomach to deliver the drug and inject it directly into the tumor.

In the second phase, the now drug-filled tumor is blasted daily with radiation to stimulate the drug and break down the tumor.

Radiation Oncologist Dr. David Raben said sophisticated “Image Guided Radiation Therapy” also allows doctors to pinpoint the tumor for fewer side effects and better results.

Combined with chemotherapy, the experimental technique is a more targeted approach to battling the deadly disease.

Gerard Meluso said is gives him hope that in spite of the odds, he can fight back for his family.

“You’ve got to have hope. I’ve seen the curves, and the outlook is not good,” he said. “But I’m not a curve. I’m either alive or I’m dead. And I’ll keep going until I can’t.”

Dr. Shah said an interim analysis showed study patients with the standard treatment survive about eight-and-a-half months and that patients with this new treatment live about eleven-and-a-half months.

Early in the study, though, Shah said, one patient’s tumor shrank enough that they were able to remove it, and he has been cancer-free for 18 months.