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In the elegant quiet of the café at the Church of Sweden, a narrow Gothic-style building in Midtown Manhattan,
位于曼哈頓中城區的瑞典教會是一個狹窄的哥特式建筑，在教會內的咖啡館里，
Daniel Cohen is taking a break from explaining genetics.
丹尼爾·科恩暫時從解釋遺傳學中脫身休息一會兒。
He moves toward the creaky piano positioned near the front door, sits down, and plays a flowing, flawless rendition of "Over the Rainbow."
他朝著前門旁邊的那架舊鋼琴走去，坐下，并彈奏了一首流暢完整的《Over the Rainbow》。
If human biology is the scientific equivalent of a complicated score, Cohen has learned how to navigate it like a virtuoso.
如果人體生物學在科學上相當于一個復雜的分數，那么科恩已經學會了如何像一個藝術大師那樣駕馭它。
Cohen was the driving force behind Généthon, the French laboratory that in December 1993 produced the first-ever "map" of the human genome.
科恩是法國實驗室Genethon的中堅力量，該實驗室于1993年12月繪制了第一張人類基因組“圖譜”。
He essentially introduced Big Data and automation to the study of genomics,
他將大數據和自動化引入遺傳學的研究中，
as he and his team demonstrated for the first time that it was possible to use super-fast computing to speed up the processing of DNA samples.
因為他和他的團隊首次證明，使用超高速運算來加速DNA樣本的處理是有可能的。
Scientists worldwide have built on Cohen's insights, and Cohen himself, an MD with a Ph.D. in immunology,
全世界的科學家都以科恩的見解為基礎，而擁有醫學博士學位和免疫學博士學位的科恩本人，
has gone on to success as a researcher and pharma executive. But a quarter-century later,
則成功成為了一名研究人員兼制藥公司高管。但25年后，
genomics has yielded few of the kinds of paradigm-changing medical breakthroughs that many of its early innovators hoped for.
遺傳學幾乎沒有取得許多早期創新者所期待的那種變革式的醫學突破。
Today, as chief executive and founder of Paris-based drug startup Pharnext, Cohen is striving to understand why that rainbow hasn't led to a pot of gold.
如今，作為一家總部位于巴黎的藥物初創公司Pharnext的CEO兼創立者，科恩正力求弄清楚，為什么那道彩虹沒有帶來一罐金子。
"Any protein in the body has many different functions, not only one," he says,
“身體中的任何一個蛋白質都有不止一種功能，而是有很多不同的功能”
returning from the piano to talk with me, "just as you are a person who has many functions in the population, not just one."
他從鋼琴旁走過來跟我說，“就像是你在社會中不僅只有一種職責，而是有很多職責?！?/div>
The phenomenon Cohen is describing is "pleiotropy," the capacity of a single gene to have multiple, seemingly unrelated effects.
科恩描述的這一現象是“基因多效性”，一個基因具有多個看似無關影響的能力。
It is one of the complexities of disease that has repeatedly frustrated medical researchers in their quest for therapies for the most stubborn illnesses.
這是疾病的復雜性之一，它一再讓尋求最頑固疾病治療方法的醫學研究人員感到沮喪。
Cohen not only appreciates pleiotropy's significance: He believes that Pharnext and other drugmakers may soon exploit it—
科恩不僅僅是重視基因多效性的重要性：他相信Pharnext和其他制藥公司或許很快就能利用它——
with a powerful boost from artificial intelligence. By embracing the body's complexity,
在人工智能的強大推動力下。理解身體的復雜性，
and by using A.I. to more methodically analyze and map the way the chain reactions of disease sweep through the body,
并利用AI系統地分析和繪制疾病橫掃身體的連鎖反應方式，
he hopes to develop combinations of drugs tuned to attack a plethora of medical conditions.
他希望通過此來開發出治療多種疾病藥物組合。
Cohen and his team are also applying A.I. to search for therapies that leverage "repurposing"—
科恩和他的團隊也正在應用AI尋找可以進行“再利用”的治療方法——
combining existing drugs in ways that give them therapeutic powers that each lacks in isolation.
將現有藥物進行結合，并賦予它們各自所缺乏的治療能力。
Their long-term goal is a drug pipeline that is far more efficient than Big Pharma's notoriously slow R&D departments—streamlined by machine learning.
他們的長期目標是一個比大型制藥公司中以緩慢著稱的研發部門更加高效的藥品管道——通過機器學習來提高效率。
Cohen's sleepy gaze widens with enthusiasm when he describes how it's all coming along. "Très bien," he says. “Très économique.”
當科恩描述這一切是如何進行的時，他睡眼惺忪的目光充滿了熱情?！昂芎?，”他說?！胺浅＝洕鷮嵒??！?/div>
Running in the same race as Pharnext are companies ranging from giants like Google and IBM to startups such as Insilico Medicine,
與Pharnext同場競技的是各大公司，如谷歌和IBM這樣的巨頭，以及像Insilico Medicine、Recursion Pharmaceuticals以及
Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and BenevolentAI. All are deeply invested in the tools of A.I.,
BenevolentAI，這樣的初創公司。他們都在AI工具上投資巨大，
using them to analyze millions of examples of drug and patient data and tease out patterns of significance.
利用它們來分析數以百萬計的藥物和病人數據的例子，并梳理出重要的模式。
But Pharnext, founded in 2007, predates most of those competitors by several years—
但成立于2007年的Pharnext，比大多數競爭對手都早了幾年——
and has a longer head start when one factors in Cohen's decades of earlier research in genomics and pleiotropy.
而且擁有更長的領先優勢，因為科恩對基因組學和基因多效性進行了幾十年的前期研究。
And perhaps most important, Pharnext's application of A.I. to medical problems over the course of more than a decade
或許最重要的是，在過去十多年的時間里，Pharnext一直將AI應用于醫療問題，
has finally reached a critical inflection point.
現在終于達到了一個關鍵的轉折點。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
| 重點單詞 | 查看全部解釋 | |||
| striving | ['straiviŋ] |
想一想再看 n. 努力；斗爭 v. 力爭；奮斗；努力（strive的 |
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| gene | [dʒi:n] |
想一想再看 n. 基因 |
聯想記憶 | |
| phenomenon | [fi'nɔminən] |
想一想再看 n. 現象，跡象，(稀有)事件 |
聯想記憶 | |
| artificial | [.ɑ:ti'fiʃəl] |
想一想再看 adj. 人造的，虛偽的，武斷的 |
聯想記憶 | |
| yield | [ji:ld] |
想一想再看 n. 生產量，投資收益 |
||
| population | [.pɔpju'leiʃən] |
想一想再看 n. 人口 ，(全體)居民，人數 |
聯想記憶 | |
| rainbow | ['reinbəu] |
想一想再看 n. 彩虹 |
||
| application | [.æpli'keiʃən] |
想一想再看 n. 應用; 申請; 專心 |
||
| inefficient | [.ini'fiʃənt] |
想一想再看 adj. 無效率的，無能的，不稱職的 |
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| complexity | [kəm'pleksiti] |
想一想再看 n. 復雜，復雜性，復雜的事物 |
聯想記憶 |
