比尔·盖茨的最新使命:治愈阿尔茨海默氏症

比尔·盖茨的最新使命:治愈阿尔茨海默氏症

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.

这是科学的圣杯之一:治愈阿尔茨海默氏症。目前，没有治疗方法可以阻止这种疾病，更不用说延缓它的发展。亿万富翁比尔·盖茨认为他将改变这种状况。

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

“我相信有解决办法，”他毫不犹豫地告诉我。

"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."

他说:“任何类型的治疗都将是我们今天的巨大进步，但长期目标必须是治愈。”

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，我有机会和盖茨坐下来谈谈他的最新计划。他专门坐在我们的摄像机前，告诉我他希望找到一种治疗这种疾病的方法，这种疾病现在夺走了全世界4700万人的记忆和其他认知功能。

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.

对盖茨来说，这场战斗是个人的。他将自己的5000万美元投资到痴呆症发现基金，这是一家公私合作的研究机构，专注于研究导致大脑疾病的一些更新颖的想法，比如研究脑细胞的免疫系统。这是盖茨第一次对非传染性疾病做出承诺。

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.

多年来，我在世界各地采访过盖茨很多次。他对阿尔茨海默氏症的研究比我以前见过的任何时候都要深入。

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，阿尔茨海默氏症是痴呆症最常见的一种，也是美国第六大死亡原因，每66秒就有一个新病例被诊断出来。超过500万美国人患有这种疾病，每年花费2590亿美元。如果不进行任何治疗，预计到2050年，这些数字将激增至1600万美国人患有这种疾病，每年的花费将超过1万亿美元。

"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."

“日益加重的负担相当令人难以置信，”这位由技术大师转型为慈善家的人对我说。这是他自己知道的。他说:“我家有好几个男人都得了这种病。所以，你知道，我知道这有多困难。这并不是我唯一的动力，但它确实吸引了我。”

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.

当他说:“我坚信随着时间的推移，科学和创新将会解决大多数棘手的问题。”我能感受到他的乐观情绪。

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.

他告诉我，在过去的一年里，他一直在调查科学家，并与他们交谈，试图确定如何才能最好地帮助治疗疾病本身，而不仅仅是治疗症状。

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.

德国医生阿洛伊斯·阿尔茨海默发现阿尔茨海默氏症已有一个多世纪。他在1906年首次撰文描述了一位名叫“奥古斯特·D”的妇女的情况。阿尔茨海默将其称为“一种特殊的疾病”，其特征是严重的记忆丧失、严重的妄想和其他心理变化。

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.

但直到阿尔茨海默对她的大脑进行解剖后，情况才变得更加令人震惊。他发现她的大脑明显萎缩，在神经细胞内和周围有不寻常的沉积物。

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.

科学家们又花了80年的时间来确定这些沉积物是什么:淀粉样蛋白和tau蛋白的斑块和团状物。它们已成为这种疾病的标志。

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.

淀粉样蛋白和tau蛋白都是可以在健康脑细胞中发现的天然蛋白质。但在患有阿尔茨海默氏症的大脑中，某些东西失控了，导致部分淀粉样蛋白聚集在一起，阻断了细胞的信息传递途径。最终，tau蛋白开始在神经元内部缠绕。

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

所有这些都会导致帮助我们大脑细胞交流的神经高速公路崩溃。