Seven years ago, biochemist Zheng Cui of Wake Forest University was conducting a routine experiment, injecting test mice with a strain of cancer cells so aggressive it caused a 100 percent death rate. Oddly, one of the mice wouldn’t die. Thinking he had made an error, Cui injected the mouse with a million times the lethal dose, but it still lived.
七年前，威克森林大學(xué)的生物化學(xué)家崔政正在進(jìn)行一個常規(guī)的試驗(yàn)：他給試驗(yàn)鼠注射一種攻擊性很強(qiáng)的癌細(xì)胞，致死率100%。奇怪的是，其中一只老鼠并沒有死亡。崔政以為注射有誤，便再次為其注射了多倍于致命劑量的癌細(xì)胞，可是，它仍然活著。
Cui was intrigued. He bred the mouse and found that 40 percent of its offspring share a remarkable resistance to many forms of cancer. When the animals’ immune systems identify a cancer cell, a genetic tweak allows their bodies to launch a massive attack of white blood cells that kills the budding tumor.
這激起了崔政的興趣。他飼養(yǎng)了這只老鼠，發(fā)現(xiàn)它40%的后代繼承了對多種癌癥的奇特抵抗力。當(dāng)這些老鼠的免疫系統(tǒng)識別出癌細(xì)胞時，一種腫瘤壞死因子基因就會使它們體內(nèi)的白細(xì)胞發(fā)起大規(guī)模的進(jìn)攻，消滅處于萌芽狀態(tài)的腫瘤。
Now Cui and his colleagues have found a clue that may point the way to an actual cure. When they inject white blood cells from any of these anticancer mice into their nonresistant brethren, the injected animals become resistant as well, fighting off induced cancer in a matter of weeks or avoiding it entirely.
現(xiàn)在，崔政和他的同事們發(fā)現(xiàn)了一條線索，有望通向臨床治療。當(dāng)他們從任何抗癌鼠身上提取出白細(xì)胞，注射到不具抵抗力的老鼠身上時，接受注射的老鼠也變得有了抵抗力，在幾周之內(nèi)就能擊退或完全擺脫誘發(fā)性癌癥。
Even more promising, Cui has sampled a group of human volunteers and found that 10 to 15 percent have similar super cancer-fighting white blood cells. That could explain why some people never get cancer and why others’ tumors spontaneously regress. Cui proposes injecting these people’s white blood cells into cancer patients to see if he can transfer their immunity.
更有希望的是，崔政對一群志愿者進(jìn)行取樣檢驗(yàn)，發(fā)現(xiàn)10-15%的人們具有同樣的超級抗癌白細(xì)胞。這說明了為什么有些人從不患癌癥，而另外一些人的腫瘤為什么能夠自行消退。崔政建議將這些人的白細(xì)胞注射到癌癥患者身上，看看能否改變他們的免疫系統(tǒng)。
Other, more established oncologists point out that Cui’s mice are genetically uniform; humans, with their distinct DNA differences, would run a deadly risk of the donated cells attacking their host, even if they aren’t rejected first. Cui counters that these issues could be overcome, as they have been for other types of transplants. “All the delivery mechanisms are in place,” he says. “We truly believe that this is a viable approach.”
其他較有地位的腫瘤專家指出，崔政的老鼠在基因上是一致的，而人類的脫氧核糖核酸是明顯不同的，即使起初注入細(xì)胞并不受到排斥，但它們對主體細(xì)胞的攻擊會造成致命的危險。崔政反駁說，就象其他類型的器官移植一樣，這些問題是可以克服的。“所有的傳輸裝置均已到位，”他說，“我們確實(shí)相信，這是一條可行的途徑?！?/p>
