文/伯纳德•马尔 译/肖伟

By Bernard Marr

Steve Jobs once said that the biggest innovations in the 21st century would be at the intersection of biology and technology. As with all areas of technology, the global pandemic has accelerated both the development and adoption of biotech, with the hope that it will lead to new solutions for major global challenges, including illness, food shortages,and damage to the environment.

Here’s a look at some of the key trends that will be driving breakthroughs and innovation in this exciting field:

Personalized medicine

史蒂夫·乔布斯曾指出21世纪最大的创新将是生物学与技术的融合。如同对所有技术领域的影响一样，全球疫情加速了生物技术的发展与应用，人们希望这能够为包括疾病、粮食短缺以及环境破坏在内的重大全球挑战提供新的解决方案。

以下是推动这一令人振奋的领域实现突破与创新的主要趋势：

个体化医疗

2 传统上，制药建立在“一方万用”的基础上，通过试验来确定哪种配方能够让最广泛的社会群体最大限度地受益。当今，现代基因组学意味着根据个体DNA构成定制药品配方成为可能。部分原因归结于2003年人类第一个基因组测序花费约为30亿美元，而现在却只需600美元左右。了解DNA在人们保持健康和身体抗病能力中所扮演的角色，便可以更简单地预测会发病的人群，更精准地作出诊断，并根据个体遗传因素进行针对性治疗。

2 Traditionally drugs and medicine have been created on a “one-size-fitsall” basis, and trials are used to establish which formulations are most beneficial to the widest segment of society. Today,modern genomics means it’s possible to tailor the formulation of medicines for individuals, depending on the makeup of their DNA. Partly this is due to the fact that while sequencing the first human genome cost around $3 billion back in 2003, it can now be done for around$600. Understanding the role DNA plays in our health and our body’s ability to fight disease makes it simpler to predict segments of the population where illness is likely to occur, make better diagnoses,and create targeted treatments dependent on individual genetic factors.

3 Currently, personalized medicine can be used for understanding factors such as how a person’s genetic makeup affects the way that cancerous cells are likely to grow and spread in their body,meaning better decisions can be made about what treatment should be given.Another common use is in preventative medicine, whereby patients with a particular genetic makeup that’s shown to leave them susceptible to a particular illness can be given pre-emptive treatment. Personalized medicine will be a strong focus throughout 2022, and researchers are confident it will lead to more effective and efficient treatments for many diseases.

Agricultural biotech

3 目前，个体化医疗可以用于了解一些影响因素，比如个体基因构成如何影响癌细胞在其体内生长与扩散方式，这意味着可以更好地确定应当给予患者何种治疗。另一种常见的用途是在预防医学中，对一些因特定基因构成更易患上某种疾病的患者可进行预防性治疗。个体化医疗将成为贯穿2022全年的焦点，而且研究人员相信这将有助于更有效、更高效地治疗很多疾病。

农业生物技术

4 在农业领域，生物技术应用于开发产量更高、抗病虫害能力更强的农作物。世界面临全球粮食危机、数百万人面临饥饿风险，此类技术具有潜在的巨大价值。这意味着种植出的食物营养更丰富，危害健康的毒素含量更低。生物技术也将降低农耕对环境的破坏程度，这是由于农作物适应力强，农药更有效、更具针对性因而使用剂量下降，也就减少了径流对土壤和水道的污染。它也被用于培育农作物来清除工业活动对土地造成的污染，使土地重新得以耕种——这一过程被称为植物修复。

4 In farming, biotechnology is used to develop crops that provide better yields and are more resistant to pests and diseases. This has the potential to be hugely valuable in a world facing a global food crisis where millions of people are at risk of starvation. It means food can be grown that is richer in nutrients and lower in toxic content that can be damaging to our health. Biotech will also lead to agricultural practices that are less damaging to environments, as resilient crops as well as more efficient and targeted pesticides will be used in lower volumes meaning less pollution of the earth and waterways from runoff. It’s also being used to create crops that can be used to remove pollution caused by industrial activity from land, enabling that land to be revegetated—a process known as phytoremediation.

5 New types of crops can also be created—one example being the caffeinefree coffee beans created by UK start-up Tropic Biosciences, which removes the need for an expensive, polluting, and waste-creating decaffeination process.2022 will undoubtedly also see further debate around the ethics of biotechnology, with society facing up toquestions around the importance of providing enough food while maintaining standards of food safety and the potential for ecological damage that genetically modified crops themselves might cause to natural environments.

Faster pharmaceutical testing and approval of medicines

5此外，还可以培育新型作物——例如，英国初创企业热带生物科技公司研制出不含咖啡因的咖啡豆，从而免去了高成本、高污染且多废料的脱因流程。社会要正视以下两方面问题：在提供充足食物的同时坚守食品安全标准有多重要，以及转基因作物本身是否可能对自然环境造成生态破坏——由此，2022年围绕生物技术伦理的辩论将更深入。

药物试验与获批加速

6在紧急研发和获准制造新冠疫苗后，人们在加快新药试验获批的进程中付出了巨大努力。这在很大程度上依赖于生物技术领域的研究成果和数据资料。传统上，新药上市要经历长达十年的审批和认证过程。生物技术数据正加速这一进程，它可以模拟药物和人体的相互作用，不必每个阶段都依赖昂贵且耗时的人体试验。美国食品和药物管理局的实时肿瘤学评审项目就是一个纳入生物技术数据、大大加快药物试验和审评过程的实例，特别是因为其有可能准确预测新型癌症治疗试验的测试结果。另一个例子是制药公司渤健推出的首款阿尔茨海默症药物阿杜卡奴单抗，由于2 0 2 1年生物技术的进步而进展迅速。我们有望看到更多关于这一领域的研究，希望更快地研发出更有效的药物和治疗方法。

6 Following the emergency development and approval of Covid-19 vaccinations, huge efforts have been made to speed up the process of testing and approving new drugs. Much of this is reliant on research and data originating in the field of biotechnology. Traditionally,new drugs have taken up to 10 years to make it through the lengthy process of approval and certification. Biotech data is being used to speed up this process by allowing simulations of interactions between medicines and the human body,rather than having to rely on costly and time-consuming human trials for every stage of the process. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Real-Time Oncology Review program is an example of a drug testing and review process that has been greatly accelerated by the inclusion of biotech data,specifically due to its potential to accurately predict testing outcomes of trials of novel cancer treatments. Another example is pharmaceutical developer Biogen, whose first-of-its-kind treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, aducanumab,was rapidly accelerated thanks to advances made in biotech in 2021. We can expect to see more research in this field,hopefully leading to quicker development of more effective drugs and treatments.

Environmental biotechnology

环境生物技术

7 我们已提到农业生物技术如何更高效地培育作物，从而减少能源的消耗以及农药对生态的破坏。然而，为了提高生态可持续性并减少对环境的影响，生物技术还有许多其他的应用途径。这包括创造专门用于分解塑料的生物有机体，使其更有效地回收。2021年，法国卡比奥斯公司设立第一家利用转基因酶分解聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯（PET）的工厂，PET是塑料瓶常用塑料。其他生物技术衍生的酶用来生产新型洗涤剂，此类洗涤剂效能足够强，可用于工业清洗过程，可完全生物降解，而不像其他工业洗涤剂那样产生有毒废物。

7 We already mentioned how biotechnology in agriculture means more efficient crop production, and therefore less energy use and ecological damage caused by pesticides. However, there are a number of other ways in which biotechnology is being harnessed in order to improve sustainability and reduce environmental impact. This includes the creation of biological organisms specifically designed to break down plastics, enabling them to be more efficiently recycled. In 2021, French company Carbios opened its first plant dedicated to breaking down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic,commonly used in plastic bottles, using genetically modified enzymes. Other biotech-derived enzymes are being used to create new types of detergent that are powerful enough to be used in industrial cleaning processes while also being completely biodegradable, rather than generating toxic waste as with other industrial detergents.

8 Another hugely important field where we can expect to see ongoing innovation during 2022 is in biofuels.New processes involving creating clean energy from agricultural and industrial waste—and even algae—are appearing thanks to advances in biotechnology.

Artificial meat

8 2022年，另一个有望持续创新、极其重要的领域是生物燃料。得益于生物技术的进步，利用农业和工业废料甚至藻类生产清洁能源的新工艺正在兴起。

人造肉

9 我们因喜食肉类而对地球产生影响，大量关于减少这种影响的研究正在开展。这导致实验室培育的人造肉越来越被吹捧为一种潜在的解决方案——至少对于我们当中那些不打算或不愿意改吃素食的人来说是这样！

9 A great deal of research is ongoing into reducing the impact that our love of meat eating is having on the planet.This has led to artificial and lab-grown meat increasingly being touted as a potential solution—at least for those of us who aren’t ready or willing to switch to a vegan diet!

10 Lab-grown meat involves cultivating tissue artificially from muscle and fat cells and has the potential to hugely reduce the amount of energy, land, and water utilized by the livestock industry—as well as the methane emissions,which are recognized as a leading cause of climate change!

11 The biotech processes for growing meat evolved from techniques originally designed to help repair injuries by regrowing damaged cells in humans or animals—for example growing skin cells to be grafted onto burn victims.A number of companies, including delivery giant Just Eat, are now planning on launching their own artificial meat onto the market, and 2022 could be the year that it starts to become widely available. ■

10 实验室培育肉类需要用肌肉和脂肪细胞人工培植组织，有可能大大减少畜牧业所消耗的能量、土地和水，以及被认定为气候变化主因的甲烷排放！

11 培育肉类的生物技术工艺起源于原本旨在让人或动物受损细胞再生以帮助修复创伤的技术——例如培育皮肤细胞移植到烧伤患者身上。包括外卖巨头Just Eat在内的很多公司正计划向市场推出自家的人造肉，而2022年可能成为其开始广泛普及的一年。 □