人类攻克癌症曙光初现

令人惊奇的试验结果提高攻克癌症的希望

"This is a huge accomplishment — huge."

副题：“这是一项巨大——真正巨大的成就。”

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania announced Wednesday that they have discovered a possibly “huge” breakthrough in the fight against cancer.

宾夕法尼亚大学大学的研究人员周四宣布，他们在抗击癌症战线上取得了一项可能为“巨大”的突破。

In two medical journals, the scientists revealed that a new treatment targeting a patient's white blood cells, which are part of the body's immune system, shows signs of early promise in combating leukemia.

科学家在两份医学杂志上透露，一种针对人体免疫系统白血细胞的新治疗，在抗击白血病方面初显成效。

The researchers engineered a virus that infected a patient's T-cells, a type of white blood cell, and carried instructions to bind to cancer cells and ultimately kill them. Three patients have undergone the trial so far, and each infected T-cell killed about 1,000 cancer cells in each patient, according to the scientists' findings.

研究人员研制出一种病毒，这种病毒可以感染患者的一种白血细胞T型细胞，并接受指令与癌细胞结合在一起，并最终杀死癌细胞。根据科学家的发现，到目前为止，在3位病人身上进行了试验，每个病人身上，一个感染的T型细胞杀死大约1000个癌细胞。

Two of the patients in the trial underwent a full recovery, at least for now, and one patient showed significant improvement. The scientists cautioned that the full effectiveness of the treatment could only be known once it is administered to a larger pool of patients but nevertheless hailed the results as a potentially major breakthrough.

至少到现在为止，接受研究病人中有两位完全恢复，另一位病情有明显改善。科学家谨慎地说，这种治疗只有经过更多病人试验后才能了解到完全的疗效，不过，他们依然赞誉这些结果预示着潜在的重大突破。

"This is a huge accomplishment — huge," Dr. Lee M. Nadler of Harvard Medical School told the Los Angeles Times. Nadler discovered the molecule on cancer cells that the newly engineered T-Cells were instructed to target.

“这是一项巨大——真正巨大的成就，”哈弗医学院的李·M·纳德勒告诉《洛杉矶时报》。纳德勒在癌细胞上发现了一种分子，就是新研制的T型细胞接受指令发起攻击的目标。

Dr. David Porter of the University of Pennsylvania, who co-wrote both of the trial's reports, was similarly optimistic. "We knew [the therapy] could be very potent," Porter said. "But I don't think we expected it to be this dramatic on this go-around."

参与两项试验报告撰写的宾夕法尼亚大学大卫·波特持有同样乐观的看法。“我们知道这种疗法可能很有效果，”波特说，“但我认为当时我们并没有期望它在这次试验中会有如此戏剧性的效果。”