本集内容

Cancer blood test trial 英国启动癌症血检临床测试

学习要点

有关 “medicine（医学）” 的词汇

边看边答

What was wrong with previous tests?

文字稿

In a retail park in Runcorn in Cheshire [England], one of the world’s largest clinical trials is getting underway. 

在英格兰柴郡朗科恩一个零售商业园内，世界上规模最大的临床试验之一正在进行中。

The first of thousands of volunteers are giving blood samples – to be tested for the presence of tiny traces of DNA linked to tumours – a warning of future disease.

首批数千名志愿者正在提供血样，以检测其中是否存在与肿瘤相关的微量 DNA（脱氧核糖核酸），这是对未来患病可能的一种警告。

Volunteers like Stuart, a serving fire brigade officer.

其中一位志愿者是现役消防员斯图尔特。

Stuart Devereux, trial volunteer
It seemed a good opportunity to actually become involved with something. Sadly, most of us are touched by cancer at some time in our lives. I thought, well, actually early detection is one thing that is going to help in our armoury against that.

斯图尔特·德弗罗       试验志愿者
“这看上去是个好机会，让我能真正参与到有意义的事情中去。不幸的是，我们当中的大多数人一生中都会在某个时候被癌症所影响。我想，其实尽早查出癌症是帮我们对抗这种情况的一种方式。”

Detecting and treating cancer early is the key to a successful recovery. But some cancers, like those of the head and neck or the pancreas, are hard to spot in the early stages. This blood test could help – and avoid invasive procedures like biopsies.

早期发现并治疗癌症是成功康复的关键。但有些癌症，比如头颈癌或胰腺癌，在早期很难被发现。这种血液测试可能有助改善这一情况，同时避免活组织检查这样的侵入性医疗程序。

Dominic Hughes, BBC correspondent
For years, scientists have been trying to develop a simple blood test that could detect cancers before any symptoms became obvious, but they really struggled because the tests just weren’t accurate enough ­– there were either too many false positives or false negatives. Now, though, they think they have made a real breakthrough.

多米尼克·休斯       BBC通讯员
“多年来，科学家们一直在尝试研究出一种简单的血液检测方法，可以在任何症状变得明显之前检测出癌症，但他们着实遇到了难题，因为之前的检测结果不够准确，要么假阳性率过高，要么假阴性率过高。但现在，他们认为终于取得了突破性进展。”

Sir Harpal Kumar, President, GRAIL Europe
So, technology is really what’s made the difference here. First of all, we need to be able to detect really minute quantities of DNA in our blood, and our ability to do that has improved markedly over the last several years.

哈帕尔·库马尔爵士       GRAIL（生物医药科技公司）欧洲主管
“技术是助我们取得突破的真正推动力。首先，我们需要能够检测出血液中极微量的 DNA（脱氧核糖核酸），而我们的检测能力在过去几年间有了显著的提升。

The second thing is the power of modern computing really – so we’ve looked at data from tens of thousands of people, and we’ve used that data to really optimise the test.

其次，还要归功于现代计算机技术的强大，我们研究了数万人的数据，并利用这些数据对测试进行了优化。”

This is just the start of a clinical trial, but if the promise of this simple test is fulfilled, it could mark the beginning of a revolution in cancer treatment.

这仅仅是一次临床试验的开始，但如果这项简单的检查能达成预期标准，就可能标志着一场癌症治疗革命的开始。

词汇

blood samples 血液样本

tumours 肿瘤

early detection （疾病的）早期发现

invasive procedures 侵入性医疗程序

symptoms 症状

问题答案

They were not accurate enough.