cancer moonshot
がんの治療方法として、がん免疫療法というものが現在注目を浴びています。
Special Report: Treatments that unleash the body's immune system to kill cancer are offering patients new hope, turning a medical dream into reality.
Steve Cara expected to sail through the routine medical tests required to increase his life insurance in October 2014. But the results were devastating. He had lung cancer, at age 53. It had begun to spread, and doctors told him it was inoperable.
A few years ago, they would have suggested chemotherapy. Instead, his oncologist, Dr. Matthew D. Hellmann of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, recommended an experimental treatment: immunotherapy. Rather than attacking the cancer directly, as chemo does, immunotherapy tries to rally the patient’s own immune system to fight the disease.
Uncertain, Mr. Cara sought a second opinion. A doctor at another major hospital read his scans and pathology report, then asked what Dr. Hellmann had advised. When the doctor heard the answer, Mr. Cara recalled, “he closed up the folder, handed it back to me and said, ‘Run back there as fast as you can.’”
Many others are racing down the same path. Harnessing the immune system to fight cancer, long a medical dream, is becoming a reality. Remarkable stories of tumors melting away and terminal illnesses going into remissions that last years — backed by solid data — have led to an explosion of interest and billions of dollars of investments in the rapidly growing field of immunotherapy. Pharmaceutical companies, philanthropists and the federal government’s “cancer moonshot” program are pouring money into developing treatments. Medical conferences on the topic are packed.
All this has brought new optimism to cancer doctors — a sense that they have begun tapping into a force of nature, the medical equivalent of splitting the atom.
“This is a fundamental change in the way that we think about cancer therapy,” said Dr. Jedd Wolchok, chief of melanoma and immunotherapeutics services at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
今回取り上げる表現は、“cancer moonshot”です。“moonshot”は、“moon”と“shot”という単語が含まれていることからすぐわかりますが、「(宇宙船の)月への打ち上げ」という意味です(『ウィズダム英和辞典』第３版、三省堂)。
今回の記事のトピックはがん治療なので、「月への打ち上げ」という意味で使われていないことが分かります。“moonshot”には、元の意味から派生して「困難だが実現すれば大きなインパクトを残す課題、挑戦」といった意味があることがわかりました。確認のためにMacmillan Dictionary.comで調べたところ、“a radical and adventurous idea”と定義されていました。
今回の記事で取り上げられている「がん免疫療法」は、治療法として確立されれば間違いなく世間に大きなインパクトを与えるものなので、“moonshot”のようにすごいことであるとたとえて表現しているのだと思います。(Blue Sky)
