1 . Despite decades of research, disorders of the brain have proved especially difficult to treat. There is schizophrenia (精神分裂症), which has not seen a breakthrough for more than 60 years, since the discovery of chlorpromazine — which happened largely by chance. But the story of chlorpromazine offers a powerful lesson: originally an antihistamine (抗过敏药), it was repurposed as a medicine for schizophrenia.
As a scientist who has studied schizophrenia for decades, I am convinced that we could have similar successes with other medicines already on our shelves. Because an existing drug has already passed Food and Drug Administration tests(FDA-approved), successfully repurposing it could take less than half of the estimated 13 years and significantly less than the average $2-billion to $3-billion cost of developing a single drug from nothing.
The thousands of FDA-approved drugs thus represent a vast resource that can possibly be adapted to target any number of conditions. But this possibility is largely unexplored, in part because drug companies always have to restructure their Research and Development (R&D) programs to look at other diseases. There are also thousands of drugs that are not FDA-approved. When a company discontinues development of a drug, whatever researchers know is locked up in that company’s files and might as well be lost.
Scientists need access (使用机会) to this information. If this information could be directed into a centralized resource, it would be great news. Researchers could employ the latest tools in bio-informatics, data science and machine learning to uncover common molecular (分子的) themes among or between diseases and promising drugs. Yet many drug companies are still unwilling to reveal anything that might put their copyrights at risk. Even academics may hesitate to share with competing laboratories.
To cope with this, organizations like the FDA must develop motivations for sharing data, such as by creating legal safeguards for privacy and commercial interests. These motivations could then open the floodgates for easy-to-use, open platforms for efficiently sharing and mining data. This would not have been possible five years ago. But now is a critical moment, and we have never been closer to real breakthroughs.
In my lab, we are testing certain cancer drugs that restore some of the biological processes that are disturbed in schizophrenia. We want to see if the drugs have the same restorative features in the brain cells of schizophrenia patients. This is a proof of the idea that a systematic and strategic approach to drug repurposing could actually move the needle. There is no time to waste. What we need is cooperation from drug companies and academic scientists alike — and access to the lifesaving data they hold.
1. Why does the author mention chlorpromazine in the first paragraph?| A．To stress the difficulty in treating brain disorders. |
| B．To explain medical progress could happen by luck. |
| C．To introduce a medicine breakthrough in medical history |
| D．To show a medicine for a certain illness can treat another disease. |
| A．Information arising from drug development can be wasted. |
| B．The undeveloped functions of present medicines are overvalued. |
| C．We should treasure FDA-approved drugs more than the unapproved. |
| D．Studying existing drugs is more likely to succeed than developing new ones. |
| A．supportive | B．negative | C．understanding | D．uncertain |
| A．New Drugs from Old | B．Access to Lifesaving Data |
| C．Between Drug Companies and Scientists. | D．Before and After Medical Breakthroughs |
2 . In the 1770s, an English doctor called Edward Jenner gave his gardener’s son cowpox (牛痘) and then deliberately infected him with smallpox (天花) to test his assumption that people who were frequently exposed to cowpox, a similar but less severe virus, would avoid catching smallpox. It worked and cowpox as the vaccine (疫苗) was highly effective. “Vaccination”, from the Latin word for cow, soon became commonplace.
Challenge trials are forms of research where, rather than relying on data from natural infections, we intentionally expose someone to a disease in order to test the effectiveness of a vaccine or treatment. Things have changed a lot since Jenner’s time, of course, when it was not uncommon for doctors to conduct this kind of research. Even so, there’s the continuous sense that there’s something immoral about making someone ill on purpose.
But this shouldn’t blind us to the extraordinary power of challenge trials. They could become increasingly important weapons in the medical research, in a situation where vaccine technology is advancing and the threat of diseases jumping from animals into human beings is increasing.
Much has been done to reduce the risks of challenge trials. Like respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), researchers have involved adults who are at a low risk of severe illness. These acts have already cut down a massive range of vaccine candidates. With their help, the world will soon have the first vaccines against RSV, which kills tens of thousands of newborn babies each year. But not all diseases are like these ones. We don’t always know the dangers volunteers might face; we don’t always have treatments ready. What then?
We could, of course, just avoid these questions entirely, and rely on other types of research.But that doesn’t always work: sometimes, animal testing is tricky and uninformative, because the disease doesn‘t develop in the same way as it would in humans. In contrast, challenge trials can be deeply informative within weeks, with far fewer volunteers. And the benefits can be surprisingly high. Take the latest pandemic. At the end of last year, as the number of deaths is estimated to have reached about 17.8 million, it’s also estimated that 20 million had been saved by vaccines.In the years to come, they will hopefully save millions more.
In order to make sure we are as protected as possible from current and future threats, we should try to get rid of the misbelief in challenge trials, making them a more familiar part of our tool kits. Perhaps the greatest reward of all would be to make sure participants’ efforts are worthwhile: by designing trials to be fair and effective and applying them when and where they might make a real difference. In short, by helping them to save thousands, if not millions of lives.
1. The author tells the story of Edward Jenner mainly to______.| A．give a definition of challenge trials |
| B．introduce the topic of challenge trials |
| C．highlight the effectiveness of his vaccine |
| D．explain the origin of the word “vaccination” |
| A．The issues behind challenge trials can be solved. |
| B．The dangers of challenge trials outweigh the benefits they bring. |
| C．Challenge trials can benefit numerous lives in spite of their risks. |
| D．Challenge trials can set back the development of vaccine technologies. |
| A．People should still be careful about challenge trials. |
| B．A more open attitude should be taken towards challenge trials. |
| C．Challenge trials guarantee participants protection against threats. |
| D．More volunteers involved can improve the accuracy of challenge trials. |
| A．Should we use challenge trials to find cures? |
| B．Can challenge trials be a block to medical progress? |
| C．Can challenge trials be the end of infectious diseases? |
| D．Should we replace animal testing with challenge trials? |
3 . Jeff Jensen was suffering from painful nerve damage in his leg and foot. He needed surgery, but he doubted if he could
Luckily for Jensen, his doctor is Demetrio Aguila. The nerve specialist gives patients at his Healing Hands of Nebraska in Papillion the
Using an algorithm (算法) , the clinic calculates community service hours based on the price of the surgery. In Jensen’s case, the $12,000 operation equaled 560 hours of
Jensen, whose surgery was completed in February 2020, was helped by more than 100 friends and strangers who freely offered to help at Orphan Grain Train, which donates food, clothing, and medicine nationally and globally.
“We can’t
| A．buy | B．afford | C．book | D．accept |
| A．depressing | B．shameful | C．confusing | D．dangerous |
| A．schedule | B．investment | C．instruction | D．option |
| A．judgment | B．curiosity | C．beauty | D．interest |
| A．helping out | B．moving about | C．hanging around | D．working out |
| A．exciting | B．boring | C．tough | D．enjoyable |
| A．even | B．almost | C．still | D．rather |
| A．training | B．understanding | C．learning | D．volunteering |
| A．trouble | B．cheat | C．ignore | D．hurt |
| A．served | B．lifted | C．tested | D．awarded |
