VOA常速英语:小鼠模型试验为癌症患者带来生命曙光

This mouse has been infected with the same type of breast cancer Eileen Youtie has.
视频中这只小白鼠感染了与Eileen Youtie同样的乳腺癌。

“I have what’s called Triple Negative.I have a genetic mutation called BRCA1, which increases your chance of getting breast cancer by 80 percent.”
“我患上了人们口中所说的三阴性乳腺癌。因为乳腺癌1号基因发生了突变，导致自己患癌的几率增加了80%。”

Youtie paid Champions Oncology, a company based in New Jersey, to find a treatment that would work for her.
Champions Oncology公司总部位于新泽西州，Youtie委托该公司来为她寻找治疗方法。

“And what we do is implant patient tumor tissues, or patient that has cancer…we implant that tumor tissue into an immunodeficient mouse, or a mouse that doesn’t have an intact immune system,so that we can grow that tumor and then test different drug therapies to be able to predict which drugs are going to work best in a patient.”
“我们现在就是将患者肿瘤组织植入或者将罹患癌症的病人…把肿瘤组织植入具有免疫缺陷或者免疫系统不完整的小鼠体内，这样一来我们就可以将该肿瘤进行培养，然后测试各种不同的药物疗法，从而预测哪些药物对治疗患者效果最佳。”

Davies says the laboratory can try out different drugs on a number of mice at the same time.Youtie had a number of treatments to choose from.
Davies说，实验室可以同时对数只小鼠试验多种不同的药物。他们有很多治疗方法可供Youtie选择。

“We got the results, and the less toxic one worked equally to the more toxic one.”
“我们得出了结论，毒副作用小的药物与毒副作用大的药物药效相同。”

There are drawbacks to using mouse models.It’s expensive.Youtie paid $30,000 because she wanted Champions to test a large number of drugs.
使用小鼠模型也有其弊端。那就是价格昂贵。Youtie已经支付了三万美元，因为她想让Champions帮自己测试大量药物。

And, there are no guarantees. If a treatment works on a mouse, there is a 50 percent chance they could work for the patient.But if it doesn’t work for the mouse, it won’t work for the patient, either.
即便如此，也不能完全保证结果。如果治疗对小鼠奏效，那么就会有50%的机会对患者有效。但如果治疗对小鼠不起作用，那么对患者也就肯定不起作用。

Another drawback is that patients delay their cancer treatment until the mouse results are in.
使用小鼠模型的另外一个弊端是，患者需要在小鼠实验结果出来之后才能进行治疗。

Studies have yet to show that using mice is better than the judgement of a good doctor.
目前尚未有研究表明，使用小鼠测试能够比一位优秀的医生给出的判断更准确。

The drug Youtie chose worked for her, so she is pleased with her choice to test the drugs on mice first, before she had chemotherapy.
Youtie选用的药物对她起效，因此她也很高兴能够先在小鼠身上进行测试，然后自己再接受化疗。

Carol Pearson, VOA news, Washington.
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