By raising your hand, how many of you know at least one person on the screen? Wow, it's almost a full house. It's true, they are very famous in their fields. And do you know what all of them have in common? They all died of pancreatic cancer. However, although it's very, very sad this news, it's also thanks to their personal stories that we have raised awareness of how lethal this disease can be.
在座的各位至少認識 一位螢幕上的人請舉手。 哇, 基本上每個人都舉手了。 他們在各自的領域都十分有名。 你們知道他們有什麼共同點嗎? 他們都死於胰腺癌。 雖然這是很糟的一件事, 但是正因為他們的故事 才使我們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. That's a very tiny number, especially if you compare it with breast cancer, where the survival rate is almost 90 percent. So it doesn't really come as a surprise that being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer means facing an almost certain death sentence. What's shocking, though, is that in the last 40 years, this number hasn't changed a bit, while much more progress has been made with other types of tumors. So how can we make pancreatic cancer treatment more effective? As a biomedical entrepreneur, I like to work on problems that seem impossible, understanding their limitations and trying to find new, innovative solutions that can change their outcome.
在由癌症導致的死亡中,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。 這個數字幾乎微不足道。 特別是跟乳腺癌比起來。 乳腺癌的存活率幾乎達到百分之九十。 所以, 被診斷出胰腺癌即幾乎意味著死亡 並不十分令人吃驚。 讓人驚訝的是, 過去40年裡, 腫瘤治療的各個領域都有了突飛猛進的發展, 然而有關胰腺癌的數據一直沒有產生多大改變。 我們如何能使對胰線癌的治療更有效? 作為生物醫學的企業家, 我喜歡挑戰看起來不可能的問題, 了解它們的限制, 並試著找出創新的解決方法, 从而改變现有的結果。
The first piece of bad news with pancreatic cancer is that your pancreas is in the middle of your belly, literally. It's depicted in orange on the screen. But you can barely see it until I remove all the other organs in front. It's also surrounded by many other vital organs, like the liver, the stomach, the bile duct. 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. The hard-to-reach location also prevents the doctor from surgically removing it, as is routinely done for breast cancer, for example. So all of these reasons leave chemotherapy as the only option for the pancreatic cancer patient.
乳腺癌的存活率幾乎達到百分之九十。 胰臟差不多位於你肚子的正中間。 它是在螢幕上橘色的部份。 但幾乎很難被看見, 除非把其他在前面的內臟都拿開。 它也被其他許多重要的內臟包圍, 例如肝,胃,膽管。 讓腫瘤有機會長到那些器管裏, 這就是為什麼胰腺癌 是最痛苦的腫瘤之一。 以乳腺癌為例,腫瘤一般採取收摘除的方法。 然而胰腺難以觸及的位置 使得手術摘除不再是一個合理的選項。 這些原因導致化療成了 胰腺癌患者唯一的選擇。
This brings us to the second piece of bad news. Pancreatic cancer tumors have very few blood vessels. Why should we care about the blood vessel of a tumor? Let's think for a second how chemotherapy works. The drug is injected in the vein and it navigates throughout the body until it reaches the tumor site. It's like driving on a highway, trying to reach a destination. But what if your destination doesn't have an exit on the highway? You will never get there. And that's exactly the same problem for chemotherapy and pancreatic cancer. The drugs navigate throughout all of your body. They will reach healthy organs, resulting in high toxic effect for the patients overall, but very little will go to the tumor. Therefore, the efficacy is very limited.
這帶給我們第二個壞消息, 胰腺腫瘤有很少的血管。 為什麼我們要注意腫瘤血管的問題? 讓我們想一下化療是怎麼作用的。 化療的藥物被注射到靜脈裏, 它通過整個身體直到到逹腫瘤處。 像在高速公路開車,試著到逹目的地。 但是你的目的地並没有出口怎麼辦? 你就永遠到不了目的地。 這就是用化療治療 胰腺癌的問題的所在。 化療的藥物通過整個身體, 會接觸到健康的內臟, 會讓毒性作用在病人的全身上下, 但只有非常少數會到逹腫瘤裏面。 因此療效非常地有限。
To me, it seems very counterintuitive to have a whole-body treatment to target a specific organ. However, in the last 40 years, a lot of money, research and effort have gone towards finding new, powerful drugs to treat pancreatic cancer, but nothing has been done in changing the way we deliver them to the patient.
對我來說,只需針對特定的器官, 卻採用讓全身接受治療是有悖常理。 然而, 在過去40年, 大量的時間、研究和努力都被投入到了 尋找新的、能更有效地治療胰腺癌的藥物。 但卻沒有在改變將藥物送達患處的方式上 做出更多的嘗試。
So after two pieces of bad news, I'm going to give you good news, hopefully. With a collaborator at MIT and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, we have revolutionized the way we treat cancer by making localized drug delivery a reality. We are basically parachuting you on top of your destination, avoiding your having to drive all around the highway. We have embedded the drug into devices that look like this one. They are flexible enough that they can be folded to fit into the catheter, so the doctor can implant it directly on top of the tumor with minimally invasive surgery. But they are solid enough that once they are positioned on top of the tumor, they will act as a cage. They will actually physically prevent the tumor from entering other organs, controlling the metastasis.
接連兩個壞消息之後, 希望我能在給各位一些好消息。 經過同一名来自麻省理工大学的研究人员 與波士頓的麻州綜合醫院的共同研究, 我們有了革命性的治療癌症的方法, 讓藥只在局部上作用的方法成真。 我們讓你空降在目的地的正上方, 從而避免你在高速上四處亂轉。 我們把藥嵌入在你看到的這個裝置。 它很有彈性, 可以折起來放入導管之中, 因此醫生可以用微創手術, 直接放入腫瘤上面。 它一旦放入又足夠穩固 在腫瘤的上面, 作用像一個籠子一樣。 它可以實際上防止腫瘤 進入到其他器官裏。 進而控制腫瘤移轉。
The devices are also biodegradable. That means that once in the body, they start dissolving, delivering the drug only locally, slowly and more effectively than what is done with the current whole-body treatment. In pre-clinical study, we have demonstrated that this localized approach is able to improve by 12 times the response to treatment.
這個裝置也可以被生物分解。 這意味從裝置被放入身體, 它們就會開始溶解, 相比目前針對整個身體的療法, 這樣可以使藥物慢而有效的被運送到局部。 臨床研究中, 我們證明了這種定點治療的方法 可以使療效提升十二倍。
So we took a drug that is already known and by just delivering it locally where it's needed the most, we allow a response that is 12 times more powerful, reducing the systemic toxic effect. We are working relentlessly to bring this technology to the next level. We are finalizing the pre-clinical testing and the animal model required prior to asking the FDA for approval for clinical trials.
我們拿已經知道的藥, 把它放在最需要的局部部位, 讓它有12倍強的作用能力, 同時減輕了對身體系統的有毒影響。 我們不懈努力為了使科技更上一層樓。 我們正在做最終確定的臨床測試, 動物實驗還有待美國藥物管理局 對臨床試驗的認可。
Currently, the majority of patients will die from pancreatic cancer. We are hoping that one day, we can reduce their pain, extend their life and potentially make pancreatic cancer a curable disease.
目前,大部份的胰腺癌病患會面臨死亡。 我們希望有一天, 能減少他們的痛苦,延長他們的壽命, 並可能使胰腺癌成為 一個可治之症。
By rethinking the way we deliver the drug, we don't only make it more powerful and less toxic, we are also opening the door to finding new innovative solutions for almost all other impossible problems in pancreatic cancer patients and beyond.
經由再次思考用藥方式, 我們不僅使藥更有效也更少毒害, 在解決治愈胰腺癌患 甚至更多領域不可能完成的问题, 找到了創新的解决方式。
Thank you very much.
非常感謝大家。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)