经济学人268:干细胞的应用 特效医学

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　　科学技术

　　The uses of stem cells

　　干细胞的应用

　　Potent¹ medicine

　　特效医学

　　Stem cells may transform the development of new drugs

　　干细胞可能改写新药发展

　　PLURIPOTENT is a long word that means able to do many things.

　　多能的意思是能做很多事。

　　It is the technical term applied² to stem cells that can generate many different sorts of bodily tissue, rather than just one sort, which is all that lesser³ stem cells can manage.

　　这一技术术语适用于可分化成多种不同身体组织的干细胞，而不是像次级分化干细胞一样只可以分化成一种身体组织。

　　But many researchers hope these cells will be pluripotent in other ways, too.

　　但是研究者希望干细胞在其他方面也具备多能性。

　　Not only might they be used to make replacement⁴ tissues and organs for transplantation into those whose existing body parts no longer work properly, they might also be used to produce pure cultures of cells for the early testing of drugs.

　　干细胞不仅可用于获得某些身体部分运作不良者移植用的替换组织或器官，还可以用于培养药物早期试验用的纯系细胞。

　　The culturing and use of human pluripotent stem cells is controversial because the natural source of such cells is embryos⁵, which are destroyed by the process of extraction.

　　人类多功能干细胞的培养和使用备受争议，因为这类细胞的自然来源胚胎，在提取过程中会被破坏。

　　But in 2007 two groups of researchers, one in Japan and the other in America, announced that they had worked out how to make adult skin cells behave like natural pluripotent cells, by adding four activated⁶ genes⁷ to them.

　　但是2007年，日本和美国各有研究者表示，通过增加4个激活基因，成人皮肤细胞可有与自然多功能细胞相同的表现。

　　The result is known as an induced pluripotent stem cell.

　　这一成果被称为诱导多功能干细胞。

　　On January 3rd AstraZeneca, a British drug company, said it would buy human heart muscle, blood vessels⁸, nerve cells and liver cells made from iPS cells by Cellular⁹ Dynamics¹⁰, a company founded by James Thomson.

　　1月3日，英国阿斯利康制药表示将向杰姆·汤姆生创立的细胞动力公司购买用诱导能干细胞生产的心肌、血管、神经细胞和肝细胞。

　　Dr Thomson, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, is the man who led the team that, in 1998, isolated¹¹ the first human embryonic¹² stem cells and in 2007 published the American version of the iPS work.

　　汤姆生博士是威斯康星大学的生物学家。他带领的团队在1998年首次分离了人类胚胎干细胞，并在2007年发表美方的诱导能干工作成果。

　　AstraZeneca has two plans for its purchases.

　　阿斯利康这次的计划有两个：

　　One is to use them to find molecules¹⁴ that encourage non-pluripotent stem cells to turn into mature tissue.

　　一是利用诱导能干细胞寻找能刺激非能干细胞转化成成熟组织的分子。

　　Such molecules could act as drugs that coax¹⁵ damaged tissue to heal itself.

　　这类分子可作为诱导损伤组织自我修复的药物；

　　The second is to use iPS cells to test drugs that have nothing to do with regenerative medicine.

　　二是利用诱导能干细胞测试与再生医学无关的药物。

　　Too often, a promising-looking drug fails late on in a clinical trial.

　　一个前景光明的药物常常在之后的临床试验中失败。

　　Sometimes this is because it does not deliver the promised benefit.

　　有时是由于该药未起到预期作用；

　　Sometimes, however, it works but its side effects prove more dangerous than the disease it is supposed to treat.

　　而有时药物起作用了，但副作用比其治疗的疾病更危险。

　　The cost of failed trials is an important reason why drug research is so expensive.

　　试验花费是药物研究成本高昂的一个重要原因。

　　AstraZeneca therefore plans to use Cellular Dynamics's cells to check the toxicity¹⁶ of potential medicines before they get inside a human being, in order to reduce the number of trials that fail for the second reason.

　　所以阿斯利康计划在人体试验前，利用细胞动力公司的细胞来测试新药的毒性，以便减少由第二个原因导致的试验失败。

　　And AstraZeneca is not the only company using iPS cells in new ways.

　　阿斯利康并不是唯一一家在新领域应用诱导能干细胞的公司。

　　In December GlaxoSmithKline,another British firm, described an experiment in which it assaulted neurons derived¹⁸ from iPS cells with beta-amyloid, a molecule¹³ linked to Alzheimer's disease, and then tested whether the beta-amyloid responded to hundreds of existing drugs.

　　另一家英国公司葛兰素史克11月公布了一项实验：该实验利用带β-淀粉的诱导能干细胞分化的神经细胞来测试β-淀粉对成千上百种现有药物的反应。

　　The findings of this experiment will be published in Stem Cell Research in March.

　　实验结果将发表在3月份的《干细胞研究》上。

　　Another trick made possible by iPS cells is to derive¹⁷ them from patients with specific ailments²⁰—particularly ailments with a genetic²¹ component—and then nudge the induced cells into becoming the type of cell afflicted²² by that ailment¹⁹.

　　诱导能干细胞还可实现另一种可能，即从患有特定疾病—尤其是与基因有关的疾病—的患者身上获得诱导能干细胞，然后使其转变成受该疾病影响的特定细胞。

　　Several groups of researchers have used disease-prone cells created in this way to explore how the disease in question develops, and whether it succumbs²³ to drugs.

　　有几个研究小组已利用这种疾病倾向细胞来探索疾病的发展及药物的有效性。

　　George Daley, of Harvard University, is one of the most enthusiastic explorers of these disease in a dish models.

　　哈弗大学的乔治?戴利是最热衷于这些皿中疾病的研究者之一。

　　In 2008 he created stem-cell lines from people with ten different conditions, including Down's syndrome²⁴, juvenile²⁵ diabetes²⁶ and Parkinson's disease.

　　2008年他从十种不同疾病—包括唐氏综合征、青少年型糖尿病及帕金森病—的患者身上获得干细胞株。

　　Such models are hardly foolproof—Dr Daley himself acknowledges that the technology is still in its infancy—but eventually they may bring new drugs.

　　这些模型难免存在差错—戴利博士也承这一技术还处于起步阶段，但最终它们可能带来新药。

　　iPierian, a company that Dr Daley helped found, has used iPS cells to develop two antibodies that might be used to attack tau, a protein implicated²⁷ in Alzheimer's disease, and also to clear up inflammation linked with Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative conditions.

　　戴利参与创立的iPierian公司利用诱导能干细胞研制了两种抗体。这两种抗体或可用于攻击与阿尔兹海默病有关tau蛋白，同事可能用于消除与阿尔兹海默病和其他神经退化性疾病有关的炎症。

　　That is a use far removed from the original idea of employing stem cells in regenerative medicine.

　　这与将干细胞应用于再生医学的原始想法相去甚远。

　　The plurality of their potency²⁸, then, is only just beginning to be explored.

　　干细胞多能性应用多样化的探索才刚刚起步。

　　1.apply to 适用于；运用；致力于

　　The same logic²⁹ could well apply to the iphone.

　　同样的逻辑或许也完全适用于iphone。

　　These passwords apply to the entire workbook.

　　这些密码可应用于整个工作簿。

　　2.no longer 不再，已不

　　That model no longer works.

　　这种模式现在不再有效。

　　But it no longer does.

　　但美国已经不再需要。

　　3.work out 解决；作出；锻炼

　　Britain, too, must work out what it wants from the eu.

　　英国也必须解决一个问题，即本国想从欧盟得到什么。

　　New cars often suffer quality glitches³⁰ that auto³¹ makers³² try to work out over time.

　　新款汽车常常存在质量上的毛病，需要生产商花时间来解决。

　　4.stem cell 干细胞

　　Her right-to-life convictions extend to stem cell research, which she opposes.

　　她还反对干细胞研究，以表现她那泛滥的”生存权“信念。

　　Long-term follow-up after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

　　异基因造血干细胞移植后的长期随访。

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