(单词翻译:单击)
By raising your hand, how many of you know at least one person on the screen?
在座的各位,至少认识一位荧幕上的人,请举手。
Wow, it's almost a full house. It's true, they are very famous in their fields.
哇,基本上每个人都举手了。他们在各自的领域都十分有名。
And do you know what all of them have in common? They all died of pancreatic cancer.
你们知道他们有什么共同点吗?他们都死于胰腺癌。
However, although it's very, very sad this news,
虽然这是很糟的一件事,
it's also thanks to their personal stories that we have raised awareness of how lethal this disease can be.
但是正因为他们的故事,才使我们注意到胰腺癌有多致命。
It's become the third cause of cancer deaths, and only eight percent of the patients will survive beyond five years.
在由癌症导致的死亡中,胰腺癌死亡率位居第三,患有胰腺癌的病人只有8%可以活到五年以上。
That's a very tiny number, especially if you compare it with breast cancer, where the survival rate is almost 90 percent.
这个数字几乎微不足道,特别是跟乳腺癌比起来。乳腺癌的存活率几乎达到百分之九十。
So it doesn't really come as a surprise that being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer means facing an almost certain death sentence.
所以,被诊断出胰腺癌就几乎意味着死亡,这并不十分令人吃惊。
What's shocking, though, is that in the last 40 years, this number hasn't changed a bit,
让人惊讶的是,过去40年里,有关胰腺癌的数据一直没有产生多大改变,
while much more progress has been made with other types of tumors.
虽然肿瘤治疗的各个领域都有了突飞猛进的发展。
So how can we make pancreatic cancer treatment more effective?
我们如何能使对胰线癌的治疗更有效?
As a biomedical entrepreneur, I like to work on problems that seem impossible,
作为生物医学的企业家,我喜欢挑战看起来不可能的问题,
understanding their limitations and trying to find new, innovative solutions that can change their outcome.
了解它们的限制,并试着找出创新的解决方法,从而改变现有的结果。
The first piece of bad news with pancreatic cancer is that your pancreas is in the middle of your belly, literally.
第一个关于乳腺癌的坏消息是,胰脏差不多位于你肚子的正中间。
It's depicted in orange on the screen. But you can barely see it until I remove all the other organs in front.
它是在荧幕上橘色的部分,但几乎很难被看见,除非把其他在前面的内脏都拿开。
It's also surrounded by many other vital organs, like the liver, the stomach, the bile duct.
它也被其他许多重要的内脏包围,例如肝,胃,胆管。
And the ability of the tumor to grow into those organs is the reason why pancreatic cancer is one of the most painful tumor types.
让肿瘤有机会长到那些器管里,这就是为什么胰腺癌是最痛苦的肿瘤之一。
The hard-to-reach location also prevents the doctor from surgically removing it, as is routinely done for breast cancer, for example.
以乳腺癌为例,肿瘤一般采取收摘除的方法。然而胰腺难以触及的位置使得手术摘除不再是一个合理的选项。
So all of these reasons leave chemotherapy as the only option for the pancreatic cancer patient.
这些原因导致化疗成了胰腺癌患者唯一的选择。
This brings us to the second piece of bad news. Pancreatic cancer tumors have very few blood vessels.
这带给我们第二个坏消息,胰腺肿瘤有很少的血管。
Why should we care about the blood vessel of a tumor?
为什么我们要注意肿瘤血管的问题?
Let's think for a second how chemotherapy works.
让我们想一下化疗是怎么作用的。
The drug is injected in the vein and it navigates throughout the body until it reaches the tumor site.
化疗的药物被注射到静脉里,它通过整个身体直到到达肿瘤处。
It's like driving on a highway, trying to reach a destination.
像在高速公路开车,试着到达目的地。
But what if your destination doesn't have an exit on the highway?
但是你的目的地并没有出口怎么办?
You will never get there. And that's exactly the same problem for chemotherapy and pancreatic cancer.
你就永远到不了目的地。这就是用化疗治疗胰腺癌的问题的所在。
The drugs navigate throughout all of your body.
化疗的药物通过整个身体。
They will reach healthy organs, resulting in high toxic effect for the patients overall, but very little will go to the tumor.
会接触到健康的内脏,会让毒性作用在病人的全身上下,但只有非常少数会到达肿瘤里面。
Therefore, the efficacy is very limited.
因此疗效非常地有限。
To me, it seems very counterintuitive to have a whole-body treatment to target a specific organ.
对我来说,只需针对特定的器官,却采用让全身接受治疗是有悖常理。
However, in the last 40 years, a lot of money, research and effort have gone towards finding new, powerful drugs to treat pancreatic cancer,
然而,在过去40年,大量的金钱、研究和努力都被投入到了寻找新的、能更有效地治疗胰腺癌的药物。
but nothing has been done in changing the way we deliver them to the patient.
但却没有在改变将药物送达患处的方式上做出更多的尝试。
So after two pieces of bad news, I'm going to give you good news, hopefully.
接连两个坏消息之后,希望我能在给各位一些好消息。
With a collaborator at MIT and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston,
经过同一名来自麻省理工大学的研究人员与波士顿的麻州综合医院的共同研究,
we have revolutionized the way we treat cancer by making localized drug delivery a reality.
我们有了革命性的治疗癌症的方法,让药只在局部上作用的方法成真。
We are basically parachuting you on top of your destination, avoiding your having to drive all around the highway.
我们让你空降在目的地的正上方,从而避免你在高速上四处乱转。
We have embedded the drug into devices that look like this one.
我们把药嵌入在你看到的这个装置。
They are flexible enough that they can be folded to fit into the catheter,
它很有弹性,可以折起来放入导管之中,
so the doctor can implant it directly on top of the tumor with minimally invasive surgery.
因此医生可以用微创手术,直接放入肿瘤上面。
But they are solid enough that once they are positioned on top of the tumor, they will act as a cage.
它一旦放入又足够稳固在肿瘤的上面,作用像一个笼子一样。
They will actually physically prevent the tumor from entering other organs, controlling the metastasis.
它可以实际上防止肿瘤进入到其他器官里,进而控制肿瘤移转。
The devices are also biodegradable. That means that once in the body, they start dissolving,
这个装置也可以被生物分解。这意味从装置被放入身体,它们就会开始溶解,
delivering the drug only locally, slowly and more effectively than what is done with the current whole-body treatment.
相比目前针对整个身体的疗法,这样可以使药物慢而有效的被运送到局部。
In pre-clinical study, we have demonstrated that this localized approach is able to improve by 12 times the response to treatment.
临床研究中,我们证明了这种定点治疗的方法可以使疗效提升十二倍。
So we took a drug that is already known and by just delivering it locally where it's needed the most,
我们拿已经知道的药,把它放在最需要的局部部位,
we allow a response that is 12 times more powerful, reducing the systemic toxic effect.
让它有12倍强的作用能力,同时减轻了对身体系统的有毒影响。
We are working relentlessly to bring this technology to the next level.
我们不懈努力为了使科技更上一层楼。
We are finalizing the pre-clinical testing and the animal model required prior to asking the FDA for approval for clinical trials.
我们正在做最终确定的临床测试,动物实验还有待美国药物管理局对临床试验的认可。
Currently, the majority of patients will die from pancreatic cancer.
目前,大部分的胰腺癌病患会面临死亡。
We are hoping that one day, we can reduce their pain, extend their life and potentially make pancreatic cancer a curable disease.
我们希望有一天,能减少他们的痛苦,延长他们的寿命,并可能使胰腺癌成为一个可治之症。
By rethinking the way we deliver the drug, we don't only make it more powerful and less toxic,
经由再次思考用药方式,我们不仅使药更有效也更少毒害,
we are also opening the door to finding new innovative solutions
我们还找到了创新的解决方式--
for almost all other impossible problems in pancreatic cancer patients and beyond. Thank you very much.
在解决治愈胰腺癌患甚至更多领域不可能完成的问题方面。非常感谢大家。