Researchers reported notable advances in the war on cancer over the weekend, including treatments for lung, ovarian and skin cancers, but they cautioned that the disease continues to throw up daunting obstacles of cost and complexity.
究人员最近公布了人们抗击癌症战役所取得的重大进展，其中包括对肺癌、卵巢癌和皮肤癌的治疗，但他们也警告称，癌症顽疾仍然在不断地制造着难以逾越的障碍，比如高昂的治疗费用和这种疾病本身所具有的复杂性。
New data presented at a major cancerconference provided both practice-changing information on the use of current treatments and powerful evidence of the potential for so-called targeted therapies, which attack cancer via genetic targets and other vulnerabilities.
在一次重要的癌症大会上公布的新数据不单提供了有关目前治疗手段的变革性信息，也提出了证明"标靶治疗"发展潜力的强有力证据，这种治疗方法能通过基因靶向和其他弱点来攻击癌细胞。
The latest advances, however, typically involveexpensive drugs that will require difficult choices by doctors, patients and insurers amid growing concern over health-care costs.
然而，这些最新的治疗手段通常都会使用到价格昂贵的药品。在外界对医疗费用高企的担忧情绪日盛的情况下，这让医生、患者和保险公司都面临两难选择。
They also underscore the growing realization that cancer is not a single disease or even a single disease within each location in the body -- say, breast, brain or lung. The more scientists know about genes, proteins and pathways that drive cancer, the more complex a disease it becomes.
他们还强调指出了一种不断深化的认识，那就是癌症并不是一种单一的疾病，也不是一种出现在身体某一部分──比如乳房、大脑或肺部──的单一疾病。科学家对致癌基因、蛋白质和途径了解得越多，这种疾病也就变得越发错综复杂。
'Cancer is like cable television,' says George Sledge, a breast-cancerexpert at Indiana University and newly elected president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which hosted the cancer meeting. 'Thirty years ago you had three channels. Now you have 500.'
"癌症就像是有线电视，"印第安那大学(Indiana University)乳腺癌专家、美国临床肿瘤学会(American Society of Clinical Oncology)新当选的会长斯莱奇(George Sledge)说，"30年前你能看到三个频道，现在你能看到500个频道"。这次癌症大会是由美国临床肿瘤学会主办的。
The challenge for cancer researchers increasingly is to match the right drug with the right channel.
癌症研究人员面临的挑战已经逐渐转变为：找到正确的频道，并配以正确的药物。
Sometimes that means going after a tumor directly, aided by genetic anomalies that make a tumor resistant to treatment in one patient but sensitive to it in another.
有时候这意味着在异常基因的帮助下直接杀死肿瘤。在一个病人身上，异常基因能让肿瘤变得更具对抗性，但在另一个病人身上，它也有可能让肿瘤变得易于治疗。
In one tantalizing example at the meeting, researchers said a drug being developed by Pfizer Inc., called crizotinib, caused tumors to shrink or stabilize in 90% of 82 lung-cancer patients specially recruited for the study because they had an alteration in a gene known as ALK.
研究人员在大会上举例说，辉瑞公司(Pfizer Inc.)研制出一种名为"crizotinib"的药物，它能让肿瘤在经过筛选的82名肺癌病人中90%的患者体内缩小或者稳定下来。这些为该研究特别筛选出来的病人体内有一种名为ALK的基因出现了突变。
Tumors shrank more than 30% in 57% of the patients. While there wasn't a control arm in the study, researchers said the participants had undergone several previoustreatments. Normally just 10% of such patients not screened for this genetic anomaly would have been expected to register a response to the treatment.
这些病人中有57%的患者体内肿瘤缩小了30%以上。尽管该实验未设置对照群组，但研究人员表示，这些参与者此前曾接受过多次治疗。在未经此类基因突变筛选的肺癌病人中，通常来讲这种治疗只能对10%的人起作用。
Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death among men and women, but only a 4% of the 220,000 Americans diagnosed with the disease each year have the genetic anomaly -- or roughly 10,000 patients.
肺癌是人类最常见的致命癌症，但在美国每年确诊为肺癌的22万新增患者中，只有4%的人带有这种基因变异──相当于大约一万人。
That significantly reduces the size of the potential lung-cancer market for the study, but it is larger than many other cancers.
这大大降低了这一研究所针对的肺癌患者群体，不过和其他许多癌症相比，这个规模还是不小。
Pfizer has already begun a larger study of the drug focusing on those patients to determine whether the drug will help prolong survival.
辉瑞公司已经开始了针对这些病人的一项更大规模的研究，用以确定这种新药是否能够帮助延长生存期。
In another study, Roche Holding AG's drug Avastin, which works by starving tumors of their blood supply, extended the time women with ovarian cancer survived without progression of disease by four months when continued for up to 48 weeks after a regimen that included Avastin and chemotherapy together.
在另外一项研究中，罗氏公司(Roche Holding AG)的药物Avastin能让患卵巢癌女性的生存期延长四个月，而且在此期间内还能够阻止癌症扩散，而前提是连续接受一年的包括服用Avastin和化疗在内的治疗。
Another advance came in a study of a drug called ipilimumab, being developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., that works not by attacking the tumor but by activating the body's immune system to go after the cancer.
另一个研究进展是来自于一种名为"ipilimumab"的药物。该药物由百时美施贵宝(Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.)开发。它不是通过攻击肿瘤、而是通过激活人体免疫系统对抗癌症来起效。
In a study of 676 patients with an advanced stage of the deadly skin cancer melanoma, patients taking the medicine lived an average of 10 months compared with 6.5 months for those taking a cancer vaccine called gp100.
在一项针对患有致死皮肤癌黑素瘤晚期的676名病人的研究中，服用这种药物的患者的平均生存期为10个月，而接受一种名为"gp100"的癌症疫苗治疗的患者的生存期只有六个半月。
Ron Winslow / Peter Loftus
- cancer [´kænsə]
n.癌；毒瘤 (初中英语单词) - conference [´kɔnfərəns] n.讨论(会)；会谈 (初中英语单词)
- involve [in´vɔlv] vt.卷缠；包括；使专注 (初中英语单词)
- expensive [ik´spensiv] a.费钱的，昂贵的 (初中英语单词)
- realization [,riəlai´zeiʃən] n.实现；认识 (初中英语单词)
- complex [´kɔmpleks] a.复杂的 n.综合企业 (初中英语单词)
- expert [´ekspə:t] n.&a.专家；内行 (初中英语单词)
- challenge [´tʃælindʒ] n.&vt.向....挑战；怀疑 (初中英语单词)
- treatment [´tri:tmənt] n.待遇；对待；治疗 (初中英语单词)
- previous [´pri:viəs] a.先，前，以前的 (初中英语单词)
- register [´redʒistə] n.&v.登记簿 (初中英语单词)
- system [´sistəm] n.系统，体系，制度 (初中英语单词)
- advanced [əd´vɑ:nst] a.先进的；高级的 (初中英语单词)
- deadly [´dedli] a.致命的 ad.死一般地 (初中英语单词)
- notable [´nəutəbəl] a.显著的 n.名人 (高中英语单词)
- potential [pə´tenʃəl] n.&a.潜在的；可能的 (高中英语单词)
- so-called [´sou ´kɔ:ld] a.所谓的，号称的 (高中英语单词)
- location [ləu´keiʃən] n.定位；位置；地方 (高中英语单词)
- sledge [sledʒ] n.雪橇；大锤 (高中英语单词)
- indiana [,indi´ænə] n.印第安纳(州) (高中英语单词)
- sensitive [´sensitiv] a.敏感的；感光的 (高中英语单词)
- shrink [ʃriŋk] v.收缩；退缩；畏缩 (高中英语单词)
- specially [´speʃəli] ad.专门地；特别地 (高中英语单词)
- response [ri´spɔns] n.回答；响应 (高中英语单词)
- roughly [´rʌfli] ad.粗糙地；毛糙地 (高中英语单词)
- prolong [prə´lɔŋ] vt.延长；拉长；拖延 (高中英语单词)
- weekend [´wi:kend, ,wi:k´end] n.周末休假 (英语四级单词)
- increasingly [in´kri:siŋli] ad.日益，愈加 (英语四级单词)
- alteration [,ɔ:ltə´reiʃən] n.改变，变更 (英语四级单词)
- shrank [ʃræŋk] shrink的过去式 (英语六级单词)
- undergone [,ʌndə´gɔn] undergo的过去分词 (英语六级单词)
- normally [´nɔ:məli] ad.正常情况下；通常 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- extended [iks´tendid] a.伸长的；广大的 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
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