Cigna Corp. is offering a free video game for teens called Re-Mission. The video game lets teens and young adults blast cancer while learning how to improve the odds of beating the disease.

The creator of the game is Hopelab, a non-profit organization seeking to improve the health of young people with a mix of good science and fun technology. Re-Mission is a teen-rated shooting game featuring a nanobot named Roxxi who roams inside the bodies of fictional cancer patients, destroying cancer cells, battling bacteria infections and managing side effects associated with cancer and cancer treatments.

Few will argue the entertainment and interactive appeal of video games for a global legion of game players. Ben Sawyer of the Games for Health Project is simply planning to take video games in a new direction of greater purpose that retains all that's best in present day video games. He's not out to reinvent the wheel -- he is looking to design one of the hubs with a focus on health topics.

"This has absolutely nothing to do with the games industry needing to stand up and be apologetic about anything," insists Digital Mill president and game developer and co-director of the Games for Health Project Sawyer. "We are not doing this because game developers have a little PR problem that needs fixing. My goal is to get the industry to do this because it makes sense and it's a smart, cool thing to do, period."

What Sawyer has in mind runs along the line of HopeLab's Re-Mission, a challenging, 3D video game with 20 levels that takes the player on a journey through the bodies of young patients with different kinds of cancer. Players control a nanobot named Roxxi who destroys cancer cells, battles bacterial infections, and manages realistic, life- threatening side effects associated with the disease.

Sawyer blogs the Games for Health Project. As stated on the blog, the goal of the project is to "help foster and support a community of researchers, developers, and users of applications in game technologies and with game development talent to create new ways in playing a greater role in helping to organize and accelerate the adoption of computer games for a variety of challenges facing the world today."

In September, the Games for Health Project will hold its annual conference in Baltimore Maryland. For more details, visit the Games for Health Project blog. Fascinating stuff in innovative applications.

Developed by Hopelab, Re-Mission is a challenging, 3D video game with 20 levels that takes the player on a journey through the bodies of young patients with different kinds of cancer. Players control a nanobot named Roxxi who destroys cancer cells, battles bacterial infections, and manages realistic, life- threatening side effects associated with the disease. HopeLab stated that the results from its scientific study involving 375 teen and young adults at 34 medical centers in the United States, Canada and Australia showed young people who played Re-Mission were more likely to stick to their medication regimens than those who did not play the game.

The genesis for the video game came from Pam Omidyar's imagination while working in a research laboratory during the day, watching cancer cells multiplying under a microscope, and then going home to play video games with her family and friends. She got the idea that a video game for young people with cancer might play a positive role in helping them fight their disease. What if a video game designed especially for kids with cancer gave them a feeling of power over their disease as they blast away at the cancer cells? She had access to researchers to test the game and see if it really would help the kids. In 2001, Omidyar, wife of eBay Inc. founder, launched HopeLab to make this idea a reality. Today, HopeLab is a nonprofit organization that helps young people deal with chronic illnesses.

HopeLab is distributing a PC version of the game to young people with cancer, free of charge, through its website and online community at Re-Mission. The game is available is in english, french and spanish versions. The Re-Mission website also provides an interactive, online community where teens and young adults with cancer can share information and support one another.