比爾·蓋茨的最新使命:治愈阿爾茨海默氏癥

比爾·蓋茨的最新使命:治愈阿爾茨海默氏癥

It's one of the holy grails of science: a cure for Alzheimer's. Currently, there is no treatment to stop the disease, let alone slow its progression. And billionaire Bill Gates thinks he will change that.

這是科學(xué)的圣杯之一:治愈阿爾茨海默氏癥。目前，沒有治療方法可以阻止這種疾病，更不用說延緩它的發(fā)展。億萬富翁比爾·蓋茨認為他將改變這種狀況。

"I believe there is a solution," he told me without hesitation.

“我相信有解決辦法，”他毫不猶豫地告訴我。

"Any type of treatment would be a huge advance from where we are today," he said, but "the long-term goal has got to be cure."

他說:“任何類型的治療都將是我們今天的巨大進步，但長期目標必須是治愈。”

I had the chance to sit down with Gates recently to talk about his newest initiative. He sat in front of our cameras exclusively to tell me how he hopes to find a cure to a disease that now steals the memories and other cognitive functions of 47 million people around the world.

最近，我有機會和蓋茨坐下來談?wù)勊淖钚掠媱?。他專門坐在我們的攝像機前，告訴我他希望找到一種治療這種疾病的方法，這種疾病現(xiàn)在奪走了全世界4700萬人的記憶和其他認知功能。

For Gates, the fight is personal. He is investing $50 million of his own money into the Dementia Discovery Fund, a private-public research partnership focused on some of the more novel ideas about what drives the brain disease, such as looking at a brain cell's immune system. It's the first time Gates has made a commitment to a noncommunicable disease.

對蓋茨來說，這場戰(zhàn)斗是個人的。他將自己的5000萬美元投資到癡呆癥發(fā)現(xiàn)基金，這是一家公私合作的研究機構(gòu)，專注于研究導(dǎo)致大腦疾病的一些更新穎的想法，比如研究腦細胞的免疫系統(tǒng)。這是蓋茨第一次對非傳染性疾病做出承諾。

I have interviewed Gates many times over the years, in countries around the world. He was more engaged on this topic of Alzheimer's than I've ever seen before.

多年來，我在世界各地采訪過蓋茨很多次。他對阿爾茨海默氏癥的研究比我以前見過的任何時候都要深入。

Today, Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia and the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, where a new case is diagnosed every 66 seconds. More than 5 million Americans live with the disease, at a cost of $259 billion a year. Without any treatment, those numbers are projected to explode to 16 million Americans with the disease, at a cost of over $1 trillion a year, by 2050.

如今，阿爾茨海默氏癥是癡呆癥最常見的一種，也是美國第六大死亡原因，每66秒就有一個新病例被診斷出來。超過500萬美國人患有這種疾病，每年花費2590億美元。如果不進行任何治療，預(yù)計到2050年，這些數(shù)字將激增至1600萬美國人患有這種疾病，每年的花費將超過1萬億美元。

"The growing burden is pretty unbelievable," the tech guru-turned-philanthropist told me. It's something he knows personally. "Several of the men in my family have this disease. And so, you know, I've seen how tough it is. That's not my sole motivation, but it certainly drew me in."

“日益加重的負擔相當令人難以置信，”這位由技術(shù)大師轉(zhuǎn)型為慈善家的人對我說。這是他自己知道的。他說:“我家有好幾個男人都得了這種病。所以，你知道，我知道這有多困難。這并不是我唯一的動力，但它確實吸引了我。”

When he said, "I'm a huge believer in that science and innovation are going to solve most of the tough problems over time," I could feel his optimism.

當他說:“我堅信隨著時間的推移，科學(xué)和創(chuàng)新將會解決大多數(shù)棘手的問題。”我能感受到他的樂觀情緒。

He told me he has spent the past year investigating and talking to scientists, trying to determine how best to help move the needle toward treatment of the disease itself rather than just the symptoms.

他告訴我，在過去的一年里，他一直在調(diào)查科學(xué)家，并與他們交談，試圖確定如何才能最好地幫助治療疾病本身，而不僅僅是治療癥狀。

It has been more than a century since the disease was identified by German physician Dr. Alois Alzheimer. He first wrote about it in 1906, describing the case of a woman named "Auguste D." Alzheimer called it "a peculiar disease," marked by significant memory loss, severe paranoia and other psychological changes.

德國醫(yī)生阿洛伊斯·阿爾茨海默發(fā)現(xiàn)阿爾茨海默氏癥已有一個多世紀。他在1906年首次撰文描述了一位名叫“奧古斯特·D”的婦女的情況。阿爾茨海默將其稱為“一種特殊的疾病”，其特征是嚴重的記憶喪失、嚴重的妄想和其他心理變化。

But it wasn't until Alzheimer performed an autopsy on her brain that the case became even more striking. He found that her brain had shrunk significantly, and there were unusual deposits in and around the nerve cells.

但直到阿爾茨海默對她的大腦進行解剖后，情況才變得更加令人震驚。他發(fā)現(xiàn)她的大腦明顯萎縮，在神經(jīng)細胞內(nèi)和周圍有不尋常的沉積物。

It would take another 80 years for scientists to identify what those deposits were: plaques and tangles of proteins called amyloid and tau. They have become hallmarks of the disease.

科學(xué)家們又花了80年的時間來確定這些沉積物是什么:淀粉樣蛋白和tau蛋白的斑塊和團狀物。它們已成為這種疾病的標志。

Both amyloid and tau are naturally occurring proteins that can be found in healthy brain cells. But in a brain with Alzheimer's, something goes haywire, causing parts of amyloid proteins to clump together and block the cell's messaging pathways. Eventually, tau proteins begin to tangle up inside the neurons.

淀粉樣蛋白和tau蛋白都是可以在健康腦細胞中發(fā)現(xiàn)的天然蛋白質(zhì)。但在患有阿爾茨海默氏癥的大腦中，某些東西失控了，導(dǎo)致部分淀粉樣蛋白聚集在一起，阻斷了細胞的信息傳遞途徑。最終，tau蛋白開始在神經(jīng)元內(nèi)部纏繞。

All of this contributes to a breakdown of the neural highway that helps our brain cells communicate.

所有這些都會導(dǎo)致幫助我們大腦細胞交流的神經(jīng)高速公路崩潰。