醫學突破意味着終於要找到HIV疫苗了大綱
Thinking back, I remember the hysteria over AIDS which gripped the country in the 80s. I even made a TV programme aimed at calming the alarm.
回憶過去，我還記得八十年代當艾滋病席捲整個國家時人們歇斯底里的狀態。我甚至還做了一個平息騷動的電視節目。
Such was the fear surrounding HIV, I was unable to make the programme with an AIDS sufferer (a woman who had contracted the condition through a contaminated blood transfusion) in a TV studio. Instead, I was forced to take the crew to a working men’s club in Bradford.
當時人們對HIV十分恐懼，因此我未能在演播室和一位艾滋病患者做電視節目（她通過血液傳輸感染了艾滋病）。所以，我被迫把工作人員帶到了布拉德福德的工人俱樂部。
Back then, treating the infection was difficult enough, so the idea of a vaccine against HIV was a pipe dream. But science marches on. We’re on the brink of having that longed-for vaccine. And it’s being called the “silver bullet”.
當時，治療艾滋病已經十分困難，所以研發HIV疫苗的想法簡直就是白日夢。但科學不斷進步。我們就快要找到渴望已久的疫苗了，也就是所謂的“新技術”。
The big hurdle has been identifying specific killer immune cells that stay in the body long enough to stop the Aids virus spreading. International researchers, working in collaboration, believe they have solved the problem. They have “unblocked” a process in the HIV virus itself which was preventing our antibody-generating B-cells in the immune system from making antibodies to kill the virus. Who knew the Aids virus was so clever?
難點就是找到特定的殺傷性免疫細胞，這些細胞可以長時間留在體內以阻止艾滋病病毒的傳播。一同合作的國際研究人員認爲他們已經解決了這個問題。他們已經在HIV病毒裏面“解除了”一個過程，能夠預防我們免疫系統中產生抗體的B細胞分泌殺死病毒的抗體。誰知道艾滋病病毒這麼聰明呢？
Lead scientist Professor Jonathan Heeney, from Cambridge University, said: “For a vaccine to work, its effects need to be long-lasting. It isn’t practical to require people to come back every six to 12 months to be vaccinated.
來自劍橋大學的首席科學家喬納森•海妮教授說道：“想要疫苗發揮作用，那它就得有持久性的效果。要求人們每6至12個月回來再次注射疫苗是不現實的。”
“We wanted to develop a vaccine to overcome this block and generate these long-lived antibody-producing cells. We have now found a way to do this. What we have found is a way to greatly improve B-cell responses to an HIV vaccine. We hope our discovery will unlock the paralysis in the field of HIV vaccine research and enable us to move forward.”
“我們想要開發一種能夠克服該障礙的疫苗，這種疫苗能夠分泌長久存在的產生抗體的細胞。現在我們已經找到了一個方法，能夠大大提高B細胞對HIV疫苗的應答速度。我們希望此次發現能夠打開HIV疫苗研究的新領域，使得我們能夠繼續向前。”
The researchers compared their achievement, reported in the Journal of Virology. So far results in lab experiments have been good. The new Cambridge approach produced the desired immune system responses and they lasted more than a year.
研究人員將他們的成果進行了對比，該研究發表在《病毒學雜誌》上。至今爲止，實驗室中的實驗結果都令人滿意。新的劍橋方法產生了令人滿意的免疫系統反應，而且時間超過一年。
In future, it should be possible to manufacture vaccines which stimulate long-lasting B-cell responses against HIV, the scientists believe.
科學家認爲，將來有可能能夠開發出刺激針對HIV的長時間B細胞反應。
