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科学美国人60秒 SSS Lung Cancer Screen Could Be Easy Pee-sy

时间:2020-05-06 08:42:40

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(单词翻译)

In mice, a test for lung cancer involves nanoprobes that recognize tumors and send reporter molecules2 into the urine for simple analysis.

Full Transcript3 

Imagine getting screened for early-stage lung cancer simply by taking a deep breath from an inhaler and then peeing into a cup.

Sangeeta Bhatia, a professor of health sciences and engineering at M.I.T., described how that might be possible in a TED4 talk she gave in 2016:

[CLIP: “What if you had a detector5 that was so small that it could circulate in your body, find the tumor1 all by itself and send a signal to the outside world? It sounds a little like science fiction. But actually, nanotechnology allows us to do just that.”]

Bhatia’s idea was to invent nontoxic nanoprobes that doctors could put inside your blood or lungs or gut6 to detect tiny tumors when they’re easier to treat—before they grow big enough to spread throughout the body and damage vital organs.

[CLIP: “I dream that one day, instead of going into an expensive screening facility to get a colonoscopy or a mammogram or a pap smear7, that you could get a shot, wait an hour and do a urine test on a paper strip.”]

In 2017 Bhatia’s team reported a proof-of-concept experiment in Nature Biomedical Engineering that demonstrated nanoprobes like this working to detect early-stage ovarian cancer in mice.

And now the group has refined this technology further to create a screening test for lung cancer that is more sensitive than the CT scans used today. The team of Harvard and M.I.T. researchers described their work in the April 1 issue of Science Translational Medicine. [Jesse D. Kirkpatrick et al., Urinary detection of lung cancer in mice via noninvasive pulmonary protease profiling]

Lung cancer accounts for nearly a quarter of all cancer deaths in the U.S. each year, in large part because most cases of lung cancer are not caught until after the disease has already spread to other sites.

Yet when lung cancer is caught and treated early, the majority of patients survive the disease for at least five years. But CT screening for lung cancer is not widely used around the world, because it’s expensive, and more than 90 percent of positive tests turn out to be benign8 growths, not cancer. So this kind of screening leads to a lot of unnecessary and invasive biopsies.

In Bhatia’s study, which was done on mice genetically9 engineered to develop lung tumors very similar to those seen in people, the nanoprobes were able to detect tumors about 50 times smaller than other screening methods. And it produced no false positives.

The nanoprobes are designed to release reporter molecules when they come near certain kinds of lung tumors. Once released, the reporters pass into the blood, get filtered out by the kidneys and then exit the body in the urine.

The group is now working to repackage the nanoprobes into a form that could be inhaled10 as a powder or through a nebulizer. If that succeeds, then the technology will have to proceed through several years of clinical trials before it could be used to screen people for lung cancer.

[CLIP: “And I hope that what this mean is that is that one day we can detect tumors in patients sooner than 10 years after they’ve started growing ... and that this would lead to earlier treatments and that we could save more lives than we can today with early detection.”]

—W. Wayt Gibbs

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]


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点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 tumor fKxzm     
n.(肿)瘤,肿块(英)tumour
参考例句:
  • He was died of a malignant tumor.他死于恶性肿瘤。
  • The surgeons irradiated the tumor.外科医生用X射线照射那个肿瘤。
2 molecules 187c25e49d45ad10b2f266c1fa7a8d49     
分子( molecule的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • The structure of molecules can be seen under an electron microscope. 分子的结构可在电子显微镜下观察到。
  • Inside the reactor the large molecules are cracked into smaller molecules. 在反应堆里,大分子裂变为小分子。
3 transcript JgpzUp     
n.抄本,誊本,副本,肄业证书
参考例句:
  • A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
  • They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。
4 ted 9gazhs     
vt.翻晒,撒,撒开
参考例句:
  • The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
  • She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。
5 detector svnxk     
n.发觉者,探测器
参考例句:
  • The detector is housed in a streamlined cylindrical container.探测器安装在流线型圆柱形容器内。
  • Please walk through the metal detector.请走过金属检测器。
6 gut MezzP     
n.[pl.]胆量;内脏;adj.本能的;vt.取出内脏
参考例句:
  • It is not always necessary to gut the fish prior to freezing.冷冻鱼之前并不总是需要先把内脏掏空。
  • My immediate gut feeling was to refuse.我本能的直接反应是拒绝。
7 smear 6EmyX     
v.涂抹;诽谤,玷污;n.污点;诽谤,污蔑
参考例句:
  • He has been spreading false stories in an attempt to smear us.他一直在散布谎言企图诽谤我们。
  • There's a smear on your shirt.你衬衫上有个污点。
8 benign 2t2zw     
adj.善良的,慈祥的;良性的,无危险的
参考例句:
  • The benign weather brought North America a bumper crop.温和的气候给北美带来大丰收。
  • Martha is a benign old lady.玛莎是个仁慈的老妇人。
9 genetically Lgixo     
adv.遗传上
参考例句:
  • All the bees in the colony are genetically related. 同一群体的蜜蜂都有亲缘关系。
  • Genetically modified foods have already arrived on American dinner tables. 经基因改造加工过的食物已端上了美国人的餐桌。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 基因与食物
10 inhaled 1072d9232d676d367b2f48410158ae32     
v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句:
  • She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. 她合上双眼,深深吸了一口气。
  • Janet inhaled sharply when she saw him. 珍妮特看到他时猛地吸了口气。 来自《简明英汉词典》

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