new weapon to fight cancer
1. British scientists are preparing to launch trials of a radical new way to fight cancer, which kills tumours by infecting them with viruses like the common cold.
2. If successful, virus therapy could eventually form a third pillar alongside radiotherapy and chemotherapy in the standard arsenal against cancer, while avoiding some of the debilitating side-effects.
3. Leonard Seymour, a professor of gene therapy at Oxford University, who has been working on the virus therapy with colleagues in London and the US, will lead the trials later this year. Cancer Research UK said yesterday that it was excited by the potential of Prof Seymours pioneering techniques.
4. One of the countrys leading geneticists, Prof Seymour has been working with viruses that kill cancer cells directly, while avoiding harm to healthy tissue. In principle, youve got something which could be many times more effective than regular chemotherapy, he said.
5. Cancer-killing viruses exploit the fact that cancer cells suppress the bodys local immune system. If a cancer doesnt do that, the immune system wipes it out. If you can get a virus into a tumour, viruses find them a very good place to be because theres no immune system to stop them replicating. You can regard it as the cancers Achilles heel.
6. Only a small amount of the virus needs to get to the cancer. They replicate, you get a million copies in each cell and the cell bursts and they infect the tumour cells adjacent and repeat the process, said Prof Seymour.
7. Preliminary research on mice shows that the viruses work well on tumours resistant to standard cancer drugs. Its an interesting possibility that they may have an advantage in killing drug-resistant tumours, which could be quite different to anything weve had before.
8. Researchers have known for some time that viruses can kill tumour cells and some aspects of the work have already been published in scientific journals. American scientists have previously injected viruses directly into tumours but this technique will not work if the cancer is inaccessible or has spread throughout the body.
9. Prof Seymours innovative solution is to mask the virus from the bodys immune system, effectively allowing the viruses to do what chemotherapy drugs do - spread through the blood and reach tumours wherever they are. The big hurdle has always been to find a way to deliver viruses to tumours via the bloodstream without the bodys immune system destroying them on the way.
10. What weve done is make chemical modifications to the virus to put a polymer coat around it - its a stealth virus when you inject it, he said.
11. After the stealth virus infects the tumour, it replicates, but the copies do not have the chemical modifications. If they escape from the tumour, the copies will be quickly recognised and mopped up by the bodys immune system.
12. The therapy would be especially useful for secondary cancers, called metastases, which sometimes spread around the body after the first tumour appears. Theres an awful statistic of patients in the west ... with malignant cancers; 75% of them go on to die from metastases, said Prof Seymour.
13. Two viruses are likely to be examined in the first clinical trials: adenovirus, which normally causes a cold-like illness, and vaccinia, which causes cowpox and is also used in the vaccine against smallpox. For safety reasons, both will be disabled to make them less pathogenic in the trial, but Prof Seymour said he eventually hopes to use natural viruses.
14. The first trials will use uncoated adenovirus and vaccinia and will be delivered locally to liver tumours, in order to establish whether the treatment is safe in humans and what dose of virus will be needed. Several more years of trials will be needed, eventually also on the polymer-coated viruses, before the therapy can be considered for use in the NHS. Though the approach will be examined at first for cancers that do not respond to conventional treatments, Prof Seymour hopes that one day it might be applied to all cancers.
Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage? For questions 1-6 write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage
1.Virus therapy, if successful, has an advantage in eliminating side-effects.
2.Cancer Research UK is quite hopeful about Professor Seymours work on the virus therapy.
3.Virus can kill cancer cells and stop them from growing again.
4.Cancers Achilles heel refers to the fact that virus may stay safely in a tumor and replicate.
5.To infect the cancer cells, a good deal of viruses should be injected into the tumor.
6.Researches on animals indicate that virus could be used as a new way to treat drug-resistant tumors.
Question 7-9
Based on the reading passage, choose the appropriate letter from A-D for each answer.
7.Information about researches on viruses killing tumor cells can be found
on TV
in magazines
on internet
in newspapers
8.To treat tumors spreading out in body, researchers try to
change the body immune system
inject chemotherapy drugs into bloodstream.
increase the amount of injection
disguise the viruses on the way to tumors.
9.When the chemical modified virus in tumor replicates, the copies
will soon escape from the tumor and spread out.
will be wiped out by the bodys immune system.
will be immediately recognized by the researchers.
will eventually stop the tumor from spreading out.
Questions 10-13
Complete the sentences below. Choose your answers from the list of words. You can only use each word once.
NB There are more words in the list than spaces so you will not use them all.
In the first clinical trials, scientists will try to 10 adenovirus and vaccinia, so both the viruses will be less pathogenic than the 11.These uncoated viruses will be applied directly to certain areas to confirm safety on human beings and the right 12 needed. The experiments will firstly be 13to the treatment of certain cancers
List of Words
dosage responding smallpox virus
disable natural ones inject
directed treatment cold-like illness
kill patients examined
Answers Keys:
1.答案:FALSE
2.答案:TRUE
3. 答案:NOT GIVEN
4. 答案:TRUE
5. 答案:FALSE
6. 答案:TRUE
7. 答案:B
8. 答案:D
9. 答案:B
10.答案:disable
11. 答案:natural ones
12. 答案:dosage
13. 答案:directed
儿童双语幽默小故事:story 2
小精灵和鞋匠和鞋匠的故事:Super Why儿童英语故事动画
Super Why儿童英语故事动画:青蛙王子的故事 The Frog Prince
双语儿童寓言故事:Adding Feet to a Snake画蛇添足
双语儿童寓言故事:聪明的乌龟A Smart Tortoise
儿童双语幽默小故事:安眠药 Sleeping Pills
双语儿童寓言故事:I Don’t Like Her我不喜欢她
双语儿童寓言故事:狼来了Wolf Is Coming
双语儿童寓言故事:海里有什么动物What Animals are the sea?
双语儿童寓言故事:狼和狗The Wolf and the Dog
儿童双语幽默小故事:那不是我的狗That Is Not My Dog!
儿童双语幽默小故事:story 9
双语儿童寓言故事:The Clever King Solomon聪明的国王所罗门
Super Why儿童英语故事动画:小波波Little Bo Peep
双语儿童寓言故事:那不是我的狗 That Is Not My Dog!
双语儿童寓言故事:可怜的乔治Poor George
双语儿童寓言故事:渔夫和他的妻子The Fisherman and His Wife
儿童双语幽默小故事:story 3
双语儿童寓言故事:误会Wrong
儿童双语幽默小故事:画蛇添足Adding Feet to a Snake
双语儿童寓言故事:散步有益It’s Good to Walk
儿童双语幽默小故事:story 4
双语儿童寓言故事:The Wolf and the Crane狼与鹤
儿童双语幽默小故事:十块糖Ten Candies
双语儿童寓言故事:蚂蚁和鸽子The Ant and the Dove
双语儿童寓言故事:父母的东西Father’s Things
Super Why儿童英语故事动画:糖果屋Hansel and Gretel
双语儿童寓言故事:Ten Candies十块糖
儿童双语幽默小故事:明天早上数Count Tomorrow Morning
双语儿童寓言故事:一只口渴的狗The Thirsty Dog
| 不限 |
| 英语教案 |
| 英语课件 |
| 英语试题 |
| 不限 |
| 不限 |
| 上册 |
| 下册 |
| 不限 |