评论
打印
Science and technology
科学技术
The uses of stem cells
干细胞的应用
Potent 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 applied to stem cells that can generate many different sorts of bodily tissue, rather than just one sort, which is all that lesser 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 replacement 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 embryos, 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 activated genes 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 vessels, nerve cells and liver cells made from iPS cells by Cellular Dynamics, 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, isolated the first human embryonic 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 molecules 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 coax 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 toxicity 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 derived from iPS cells with beta-amyloid, a molecule 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 derive them from patients with specific ailments—particularly ailments with a genetic component—and then nudge the induced cells into becoming the type of cell afflicted by that ailment.
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 succumbs 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 syndrome, juvenile diabetes 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 implicated 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 potency, 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。
