Oncology Frontier: Your talk about gene therapy and how you were attempting to end the cycle by defeating a particular protein?

　　《肿瘤瞭望》：提到基因治疗，您是如何针对特定蛋白来遏制肿瘤转移的？

　　Dr. Kang: Yes， exactly， a lot of these metastases are mediated by crosstalk between tumor cells that produce either a secretive factor or a receptor that influences the stromal cell. They never do this alone， they always utilize and make use of the stromal cell as force labor to do the job for them to degrade the bone or produce growth factors or stemness factors. If you can intercept that crosstalk you can slow down the progression of metastases.

　　康教授：实际上，很多转移癌发生均由可促进影响基质细胞的未知因子或受体的肿瘤细胞间交互作用介导。它们本身不会促进肿瘤转移，而需以基质细胞为载体来降解骨骼或促进生长因子或多潜能因子产生。如能阻断这种交互作用，则有望延缓转移癌进展。

　　Oncology Frontier: You mention that the crosstalk sometimes happens early in the cell’s life.

　　《肿瘤瞭望》：这种交互作用可能会发生在细胞生命周期的早期。

　　Dr. Kang: Yes， some of the earliest events actually， for example， even in the primary tumor， the cells are already trying to adapt to the primary tumor to use some of those close crosstalk pathways. Some of the same gene later could be used to adapt to a different environment， so some of the stromal cells could be different， but the gene pathway could be the same. They are already sort of getting their exercise in the primary tumor， and getting fit. Once you get there， they are all ready to go.

　　康教授：是的。例如在一些最早期事件甚至原发肿瘤中，细胞就已试图通过这些密切交互作用适应原发肿瘤微环境，而后有些相同基因会适应不同环境。所以，虽然有些干细胞不同，但其基因通路可能相同，它们在原发肿瘤中已获得这种能力。

　　Oncology Frontier: If you project your research to the clinic， what do you see as the benefit to the clinical physician?

　　《肿瘤瞭望》：如果您的研究应用于临床，您认为会为临床医生带来哪些获益？

　　Dr. Kang : I think there are several layers of benefit. Metastases are a hard problem and we need to treat them in every corner of the turn of cancer progression. In early stage disease， we need to find ways to find the high risk patients， treat them accordingly， and prevent formation of metastases. For the patients who already have recovered from cancer， we want to prevent those from relapsing and keep it in the dormant state and increase the efficacy of chemotherapies and maybe immunotherapy. For patients who already have metastatic disease we need to be able to control it， so that they do not progress quickly to kill the patient. We need to control them to become into a calm state so the patient can live with it. There are actually many therapeutic opportunities in every possibility there. I think it is still an underdeveloped area because pharmaceutical companies in general are hesitant to get involved but it is also one with the greatest potential， just look at the immunotherapy. 5 years ago nobody thinks about it， but now it is the trend.

　　康教授：我认为可带来几个层面的获益。转移癌是临床难题，我们需要从癌症进展的各个方面对其治疗。在疾病早期，需找到能识别高危患者并进行相应治疗的方法来预防转移发生；对已恢复的癌症患者，则要积极预防癌症复发，使其保持休眠状态，积极提高化疗及免疫治疗的疗效；对已发生转移的患者，需积极控制从而使其进入相对平静状态，遏制疾病快速进展，避免患者死亡，延长患者带病生存时间。因此，转移癌的防控机会很多。鉴于很多药厂不愿涉足，转移癌治疗仍是尚未得到充分研究的领域，亟需开展进一步研究，但这也说明该领域有巨大的发展潜能，正如免疫治疗，5年前尚无人想到这一疗法，但却是目前的主流治疗。