These signatures represent small chemical changes to the DNA in cancers including lung, skin and ovarian cancer. Andrew Biankin, a surgeon at the University of Glasgow in the UK, was one of the researchers involved. He says it was possible to observe the "insult to the DNA" that left a tell-tale sign of the damage.

这些生物标示显示了在肺癌，皮肤癌，卵巢癌等癌症中基因上的小的化学变化。在格拉斯哥大学任职的外科专家安德鲁.比安金（Andrew Biankin）是研究小组成员之一。他认为通过观察可以发现每个受攻击的基因留下的受损的标记。

In skin cancer like melanoma, we can see evidence of UV light exposure, in lung cancer can see a particular signature of smoking exposure, explains Biankin. "We can see evidence of there being an inherited inability to repair DNA."

“通过观察，我们发现皮肤癌中的恶性黑色素瘤中有明确的证据显示与紫外线暴晒有直接关系，而在肺癌中能够发现由于吸烟所导致的印记,”安德鲁教授进一步解释。“而证据显示这些受损的基因细胞通过遗传也永远无法得到修复。”

As well as these known cancer signatures, the team could see unusual cancer-forming patterns where the cause was unclear. "There's [now] a lot of effort in trying to work out what these causes are," he says.

“除了已知的癌症标识，研究小组还发现了不同寻常的癌细胞基因组成结构，但并不清楚癌症的诱因是什么，我们的团队正在努力寻找出原因，”他说。

The core challenge for researchers like Biankin and Cancer Research UK, who funded the study, will be to understand exactly what leads to these types of genetic change.

”对于比安金和赞助这个项目的英国癌症研究的科学人员来说，最大的挑战来自于必须要非常清晰的理解寻找出基因变异的原因。

While it is vital to understand the causes of cancer and to find new treatments, others stress that for now it is more important to focus on prevention. That is because there are known risk factors that contribute to cancer-causing mutations, such as smoking and sunburn.

寻找针对癌症的有效治疗办法，理解癌症诱因至关重要，另外一些人则强调目前更重要的是癌症的预防。因为现在清晰的证据表明，一些潜在风险能够导致基因突变引发癌症，例如吸烟及阳光下的暴晒。

Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, says focusing on some of these risks could prevent many instances of cancer forming in the first place. He cites two startling statistics: in 1900 the age-adjusted death rate for cancer in the US was 65 per 100,000, but this had jumped to 210 deaths per 100,000 only 90 years later.

美国癌症社会(American Cancer Society)的首席医疗官奥蒂斯.布劳利（Otis Brawley）认为专注于这些潜在风险能够预防癌症的形成。他给出了两个惊人的数字，在1900年美国每10万人当中有65个人因患癌症死亡，但是仅仅在90年后，在同规模的调查中，因患癌症死亡人数迅速飙升至210人。

If you have something that has increased that quickly over 90 years, there's something that causing it, says Brawley. "If you can remove the cause you can decrease the cancer."

“这说明在过去90年中有一些因素导致了癌症发病率的提高。如果我们能够消除诱因，那么患癌率将会下降。”

In the US there has been a 25% decline in death rate in the last two decades. "More than half of that decline is driven by cancer prevention activities," says Brawley.

美国在过去20年中死亡率下降了25%，“有超过一半的原因是因为癌症预防活动的普及，” 布劳利说。

This points to the fact that some of the cancers that would previously have killed people had been prevented. Almost a third of death from cancer in the US has been attributed to cigarette smoking, for example. This makes tobacco "the single most preventable cause of death in the world", according to Cancer Research UK.

这说明一些曾经导致死亡的癌症病因得到了有效的预防。例如，在美国，吸烟导致了超过三分之一的癌症死亡. 根据英国癌症研究机构的说法吸烟就是“世界上最能够通过预防而避免的死因。”

Although it is obviously good that death rates are falling, overall cancer diagnoses are on the rise.

尽管癌症死亡率下降是个好消息，患癌率却在逐年上升。

There is a degree to which this is because certain cancers are now better diagnosed, and so cases are more likely to be identified and counted. This is true of prostate cancer, for instance.

从某种程度上说这是因为某些癌症并不太容易诊断，因此病例也没有被发现和统计。比如前列腺癌就属于这种情况。

But a more telling reason for the rise is that humans, on average, live a lot longer than they used to. "If you live long enough you will get cancer," says Biankin.

但另一个更为显而易见的原因就是人类的平均寿命比以前要长得多。所以“如果你活的时间足够长，你就有可能会得癌症，”比安金如是说。

If we decide that we all want to live to more than 70, then we have to accept that sooner or later we will get some sort of cancer, says Bardelli. It is inevitable because our cells have not evolved to maintain their DNA for as long as we now live, he says.

“如果我们决定我们都要活过70岁，那么我们就需要接受一个现实，早晚我们都会患癌症。”巴尔代利说到。因为在如此长的进化过程中，我们的细胞无法一直持续的维持我们的基因稳定的进化。

Brawley goes even further, and says that everyone over 40 will get a mutation that can cause cancer at some point. That sounds alarming, but fortunately our natural defence mechanisms will usually stop the mutation in its tracks by destroying the mutant cell before it can grow into a full-blown tumour.

布劳利教授的观点可能更吓人，根据他的理论，任何人只要超过40岁，体内的细胞就有可能发生变异。只不过我们有着完善的自我防御系统，能够迅速识别这些变异的细胞，并且在他们还没有真正成为癌细胞的时候就被身体的防卫机制摧毁。

Even though the rise in cancer is an almost inevitable consequence of other improvements in our health, progress towards better treatments is continuing apace.

人类健康状况的提升带来一个无法避免的结果就是癌症病例也在上升，而找到更有效的治疗方法也在不断的进步。

And peering back into how life works to "fight evolution with evolution" may well provide further breakthroughs. "Our host, our body has to make use of resources that have been growing for millions and millions of years," says Bardelli.

回顾生命如何“用进化打败进化”可能会提供更多的突破口。“我们的宿主，我们的身体应该充分利用发展了上百万年的资源，”巴尔代利说到。

There is hope. I have no doubt we will beat cancer, no doubt, he says. "Sometimes we fail because we don't identify the problem as it should be. It's nobody's fault, it's how science works."

“未来充满希望。毫无疑问我们最终将战胜癌症，我毫不怀疑这一点。有些时候我们失败了是因为我们并没有明确问题所在，这不是任何人的错误，科学就是这样运作的，”他说。