TED演讲:在体内寻找癌细胞的小颗粒(2)

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You took a big thing and you made it little. 你带来一个大东西并且把它变小。

But what I told you before about computers was that they transformed our lives 但是我之前提到了电脑改变了我们的生活，

when they became small enough for us to take them everywhere. 它们小到我们可以随身携带。

So what is the transformational equivalent like that in medicine? 那么在药物领域，等效的转换会是什么样的呢？

Well, what if you had a detector¹ that was so small that it could circulate in your body, 如果你有一个探测器，它小到可以在你的体内循环，

find the tumor² all by itself and send a signal to the outside world? 自己找到肿瘤并向外面的世界传送信号会怎样呢？

It sounds a little bit like science fiction. 这听起来有点像科幻小说。

But actually, nanotechnology allows us to do just that. 但是实际上，运用纳米技术就能实现。

Nanotechnology allows us to shrink the parts that make up the detector 纳米技术可以让我们缩小探测器组成部分的尺寸，

from the width of a human hair, which is 100 microns, 从到发丝的宽度的大小，也就是100微米

to a thousand times smaller, which is 100 nanometers. 到再小1000倍的尺度，也就是100纳米。

And that has profound implications. 这就极大的扩展了应用范围。

It turns out that materials actually change their properties at the nanoscale. 实际上在纳米级别尺寸的时候，材料的性质会发生改变。

You take a common material like gold, 你拿一个常见的金属比如金，

and you grind it into dust, into gold nanoparticles, 把它研磨成灰，研磨成纳米颗粒，

and it changes from looking gold to looking red. 它就会从金色外表变成红色。

If you take a more exotic material like cadmium selenide forms a big, black crystal 如果你拿一个比较稀有的材料比如硒化镉，会形成一块大的黑色晶体，

if you make nanocrystals out of this material and you put it in a liquid, 如果你用这种材料做成纳米结晶，然后把它放入液体中，

and you shine light on it, they glow. 用光照一下，它们就会发光。

And they glow blue, green, yellow, orange, red, depending only on their size. 它们可以发出蓝绿黄橙红不同的光，仅仅根据尺寸的不同而变化。

It's wild! Can you imagine an object like that in the macro world? 这太疯狂了！你可以想象宏观世界有这种材料么？

It would be like all the denim³ jeans in your closet are all made of cotton, 这就像你衣橱里所有的棉质牛仔裤

but they are different colors depending only on their size. 依据尺寸不同，颜色也会不一样。

So as a physician, what's just as interesting to me 作为一位医生，让我感兴趣的

is that it's not just the color of materials that changes at the nanoscale; 不仅仅是材料的颜色在纳米尺寸会改变，

the way they travel in your body also changes. 它们在人体内运动的方式也将改变。

And this is the kind of observation that we're going to use to make a better cancer detector. 这也是一种我们即将使用的观察方式，用来制造更好的癌症检测装置。

So let me show you what I mean. 下面我来解释一下。

This is a blood vessel⁴ in the body. 这是一条人体的血管。

Surrounding the blood vessel is a tumor. 包裹着血管的就是肿瘤。

We're going to inject nanoparticles into the blood vessel 我们将要把纳米颗粒注射进血管，

and watch how they travel from the bloodstream into the tumor. 并观察它们如何随着血流进入肿瘤。

Now it turns out that the blood vessels⁵ of many tumors are leaky, 事实证明有许多肿瘤的血管是有漏洞的,

and so nanoparticles can leak out from the bloodstream into the tumor. 所以纳米颗粒，可以从血流渗漏到肿瘤中。

Whether they leak out depends on their size. 它们是否能渗透出去取决于它们的尺寸。

So in this image, the smaller, hundred-nanometer, blue nanoparticles are leaking out, 在这张图中，较小的百纳米尺寸的蓝色纳米颗粒正在渗漏至血管外，

and the larger, 500-nanometer, red nanoparticles are stuck in the bloodstream. 大一点的500纳米的红色颗粒被困在了血管中。

So that means as an engineer, 所以这对于工程师来说，

depending on how big or small I make a material, 取决于我所制造的材料的大小，

I can change where it goes in your body. 我可以控制它能够去你身体里的哪一部分。

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