英日科學家因“細胞重新編程”獲諾獎

Two stem-cell researchers have won this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their groundbreaking work in cellular reprogramming, a technique that unleashed a wave of advances in biology, from cloning to the possible treatment of diseases using a patient's own cells.

兩位幹細胞研究者因其在細胞重新編程方面的開創型工作，獲得了今年諾貝爾生理或醫學獎。細胞重新編程技術引發了一輪生物學進步浪潮，其中包括克隆以及有可能使用病人自身細胞來治癒疾病。

Experiments by John B. Gurdon of the United Kingdom and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan showed that mature cells taken from the body could be changed to an embryonic-like state in a laboratory dish, a head-spinning discovery that is the biological equivalent of turning back time.

英國人格登(John B. Gurdon)和日本人山中伸彌(Shinya Yamanaka)的試驗表明，取自人體的成熟細胞可在實驗室培養皿中轉變爲類似胚胎狀態的細胞。這是一項令人震驚的發現，在生物學上相當於將時光倒轉。

Their work 'has changed the accepted dogma' that mature cells are condemned to exist in a specialized state, said Martin Evans, a British stem-cell pioneer who shared the 2007 Nobel Prize for medicine, in an interview.

英國幹細胞研究先驅、曾於2007年分享諾貝爾醫學獎的埃文斯(Martin Evans)在接受採訪時說，他們的工作改變了人們認爲的成熟細胞只能存活於特定狀態下的固有看法。

Cellular reprogramming triggered the rewriting of biology textbooks and spawned thousands of new experiments in labs around the world. It led to the first cloned animal-a frog-and to the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep. It also paved the way for deriving embryonic-like stem cells without destroying human embryos, sidestepping an ethically contentious approach.

細胞重新編程引發了生物教科書的改寫，在世界各地的試驗室裏催生了成千上萬項新試驗。這項技術帶來了世界上首隻克隆動物──青蛙，進而又出現了首隻克隆哺乳動物──綿羊多莉。此外，該技術還爲在不破壞人類胚胎的情況下獲取類胚胎幹細胞鋪平了道路，從而避免採用具有倫理爭議的幹細胞提取方法。

Once cellular reprogramming is used to turn mature cells into embryonic-like ones, those cells can be further manipulated and turned into heart, nerve, muscle and virtually all other tissues types. This freshly made tissue-from an Alzheimer's patient, for example-could be inexpensively grown and studied in a lab dish.

一旦細胞重新編程被用於將成熟細胞轉變爲類胚胎細胞，這些細胞就可以被進一步培養成心臟、神經、肌肉等幾乎一切組織細胞。例如，從患阿爾茨海默病的人身上新獲取的組織可在試驗室經培養和研究，且花費不多。

Drug firms have already started to test drugs on human tissue made through reprogramming. Next year, fresh retinal cells derived in this way will be transplanted into people for the first time, in a Japanese trial for patients with an eye disease known as macular degeneration.

製藥企業已開始對通過重新編程獲得的人體組織進行藥物試驗。明年，用這種方法獲得的新生視網膜細胞將首次被移入人體，在日本對患有黃斑病變眼疾的病人進行臨牀試驗治療。

Scientists used to believe the fate of our cells was a one-way trip. We start as a fertilized egg; become an embryo consisting of immature, undifferentiated cells; then gradually develop into a body of specialist cells, including blood, bone, muscle and skin.

科學家過去認爲，細胞的生長是不可逆的。我們始於一個受精卵，然後成爲由不成熟、未分化的細胞組成的胚胎，再逐漸發育爲由專門細胞構成的個體，包括血液、骨骼、肌肉和皮膚。

In 1962, Dr. Gurdon, while trying to understand how simple, undifferentiated cells became all the other cells in the body, performed an audacious experiment. He removed the DNA from a frog egg and replaced it with the DNA of a mature cell taken from a tadpole. The egg developed into a healthy, cloned tadpole. (The same approach would be used to create Dolly the sheep in 1996.)

1962年，格登還在努力瞭解未分化的簡單細胞是如何變成人體內所有其它細胞的，那時他就做了一項大膽的試驗。格登從一枚青蛙卵子中移除DNA，再將從蝌蚪身上提取的成熟細胞的DNA放入這枚卵子內，後來該卵子發育成一隻健康的克隆蝌蚪。(1996年克隆羊多莉的誕生也是用的這種方法。)

The frog experiment was an effort to answer 'a pure scientific question about how we came to be formed. There was no foreseeable therapeutic benefit,' said Dr. Gurdon in an interview. Now 79, Dr. Gurdon is a professor at the Gurdon Institute, part of Cambridge University.

格登接受採訪時說，那個青蛙試驗其實是在努力回答有關我們是如何形成的純科學問題，當時並沒有可預見的治療益處。如今，79歲的格登是英國劍橋大學(Cambridge University)格登學院(Gurdon Institute)的一名教授。

Dr. Yamanaka, 50, was born in the year Dr. Gurdon did his frog experiment. Dr. Yamanaka would eventually ponder a related question: Could the Gurdon reprogramming trick be done without using eggs-which, in human cases, can be hard to come by?

山中伸彌今年50歲，他出生的那年格登正在做青蛙試驗，而他也終將思考一個相關問題：格登的重新編程技術能否在不用卵子的情況下完成？具體到人類試驗上，這一點很難做到。

Dr. Yamanaka had the answer a few years later. He demonstrated that by adding just four genes to a mature cell, he could turn it into an embryonic-like state. He first achieved this with mouse cells, and in 2007 he reported the same result for human cells. He transformed those cells, in turn, into heart, nerve and other human tissue in a lab.

山中伸彌在幾年後得到了答案。他向世人證明，只需將四個基因引入一個成熟細胞，就可將該細胞轉變爲類胚胎狀態。他首先用老鼠細胞成功做到這一點，然後在2007年又宣佈用人類細胞成功完成了這一轉變。他將那些細胞在試驗室裏依次培養爲了心臟、神經和其它人類組織細胞。

'Without [Dr. Gurdon's] work we would never have started this risky project 12 years ago,' said Dr. Yamanaka, who is a professor at Kyoto University and affiliated with the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, in an interview.

山中伸彌在接受採訪時說，沒有格登的工作，我們永遠不會在12年前着手這項有風險的項目。山中伸彌是日本京都大學(Kyoto University)教授兼美國舊金山格萊斯頓研究院(Gladstone Institutes)高級研究員。