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Good news is flowing from the world’s cancer labs. Researchers are reporting encouraging clinical trial results for a diversity of novel treatments, including individualised cancer vaccines, as well as new diagnostic techniques. Various forms of immunotherapy — adapting the patient’s immune system to destroy cancer cells — are proving remarkably successful at extending survival times of some people with refractory tumours.
全球癌症实验室传来了好消息。研究人员报告了多种新型治疗方法的鼓舞人心的临床试验结果，包括个体化癌症疫苗和新的诊断技术。各种形式的免疫疗法——通过调整患者的免疫系统来摧毁癌细胞——在延长一些患有难治性肿瘤的患者的生存时间方面取得了显著的成功。
One reason for the rapid progress is that cancer research has been well funded by industry, governments and charities in comparison with other diseases. Almost 40 per cent of all pharmaceutical R&D investment is directed at clinical oncology — making it the leading field for precision medicine, with diagnostics and drugs tailored to the individual characteristics of patients.
癌症研究之所以取得迅速进展的一个原因是，与其他疾病相比，癌症研究得到了工业界、政府和慈善机构的大力资助。几乎40%的制药研发投资都用于临床肿瘤学，使其成为精准医学的领域，通过针对患者个体特征进行诊断和药物治疗。
This encouraging lesson about the productivity of research funding has not been lost on scientists working on different diseases, such as dementia and infections, where there is much unmet medical need but relatively less investment. They are right to point to cancer as an example of what can be achieved with more R&D resources.
这种关于研究资金生产力的鼓舞人心的教训并没有被在痴呆症和感染等不同疾病上工作的科学家们忽视，这些领域存在着很大的医疗需求，但相对较少的投资。他们指出癌症是更多研发资源可以取得的成就的一个例子，他们是正确的。
Moving cancer research breakthroughs rapidly into regular clinical practice will require agile regulators and responsive healthcare providers. They must provide not only appropriate treatment facilities, but diagnostic services to detect tumours as early as possible when chances of a cure are highest.
将癌症研究的突破迅速转化为常规临床实践，需要灵活的监管机构和响应迅速的医疗服务提供者。他们不仅必须提供适当的治疗设施，还必须提供早期检测肿瘤的诊断服务，以便在治愈机会最大的时候尽早发现。
The new wave of personalised treatments will be expensive when first introduced; immunotherapies often cost more than $100,000 per patient. Pharma companies will inevitably come under pressure to cut what their critics may portray as exorbitant pricing. While drug prices must be subject to some control, the industry’s return on investment should remain high enough to maintain its large, productive cancer research effort. Costs of new medical technologies do come down over time as they are applied more extensively.
新一波的个性化治疗在刚开始推出时会很昂贵；免疫疗法的费用通常超过每位患者10万美元。制药公司将不可避免地面临压力，要削减批评者可能认为过高的定价。虽然药物价格必须受到一定的控制，但该行业的投资回报率应保持足够高，以维持其庞大而富有成效的癌症研究工作。随着新的医疗技术得到更广泛的应用，其成本会随时间降低。
Faster diagnosis and better treatments are needed more than ever, as the incidence of cancer continues to rise globally. Disturbingly, cases are growing most rapidly among younger people, for reasons that scientists are only just beginning to understand — and which require urgent investigation. Cancer rates in 25- to 49-year-olds increased by 24 per cent since 1995, according to the charity Cancer Research UK. Although cancer remains largely an affliction of old age, and under-50s still account for no more than 10 per cent of all patients, they represent a much larger proportion of years of healthy life lost to the disease.
随着全球癌症发病率持续上升，更迫切地需要更快的诊断和更好的治疗。令人不安的是，癌症病例在年轻人中增长最快，原因科学家们才刚刚开始理解，并需要紧急调查。根据英国癌症研究基金会(Cancer Research UK)的数据，25至49岁人群的癌症发病率自1995年以来增加了24%。尽管癌症仍然主要是老年人的疾病，而50岁以下的患者仍然只占所有患者的不到10%，但他们却占据了因该疾病而失去的健康年份的很大比例。
Experts believe the rapid increase in obesity in recent decades is one factor driving the growth of tumours such as breast and colorectal cancer among the young. Data presented at the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago suggests that taking the popular weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy would reduce the risk of developing many common tumours — though, as public health campaigners point out, it would be preferable to tackle obesity by changing people’s diets rather than by medication. Beyond obesity, scientists are looking for carcinogenic signals among the many environmental and lifestyle changes that have taken place over recent decades.
专家们认为近几十年来肥胖症的迅速增加是导致年轻人患上乳腺癌和结肠直肠癌等肿瘤增长的一个因素。在最近在芝加哥举行的美国临床肿瘤学会(American Society of Clinical Oncology)议上发布的数据表明，服用流行的减肥药物威戈维和威戈维可以降低患上许多常见肿瘤的风险，尽管公共卫生活动家指出，与其通过药物治疗，改变人们的饮食习惯来解决肥胖问题更为可取。除了肥胖问题，科学家们还在近几十年发生的许多环境和生活方式变化中寻找致癌信号。
As the disease becomes more prevalent, people are living for longer on average after diagnosis, though progress is currently slow. Human biology means that cancer will always be with us. But the new diagnostic tools and treatments emerging from the world’s labs promise to accelerate the extension of survival time — and make oncology a shining example of the value of biomedical research spending.
随着疾病的普遍性增加，人们在被诊断后的平均寿命也在延长，尽管目前进展缓慢。人类生物学意味着癌症将永远存在。但来自世界各地实验室的新诊断工具和治疗方法承诺加速延长生存时间，并使肿瘤学成为生物医学研究支出价值的光辉典范。