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  3. It may be dealing with the worst budget crunch in its history, but that is not stopping the National Cancer Institute(NCI)from d

It may be dealing with the worst budget crunch in its history, but that is not stopping the National Cancer Institute(NCI)from d

admin2015-03-25  12
问题     It may be dealing with the worst budget crunch in its history, but that is not stopping the National Cancer Institute(NCI)from doing new things. Today, NCI officials outlined a plan to bring together the agency’s contract lab in Frederick, Maryland, and outside researchers to find ways to block a mutated protein that drives growth in one-third of all cancers but was thought impossible to "drug" until now.
    The RAS project, as NCI is calling it, will not involve huge amounts of money—just $10 million that will be reprogrammed from other work at NCI’s Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. But it will attempt to draw in the hundreds of extramural researchers who now study this protein and its gene to work together in what NCI Director Harold Varmus calls a "megaproject. " "Finally after 30 years of knowing how important RAS is in cancer, to actually produce some outcomes that are helpful to patients," said Varmus at a joint meeting today of his National Cancer Advisory Board and Board of Scientific Advisors.
    RAS, for rat sarcoma, is a family of genes whose proteins transmit signals that allow cells to grow and survive. RAS is mutated in about 33% of cancers, including 95% of pancreatic tumors. Drug companies had long ago given up on targeting RAS, however, because it doesn’t have an obvious pocket, or binding site, that a drug could fit into to block its activity.
    Researchers have begun to find some weak spots in RAS, however, and NCI now thinks it is time for a coordinated attack on this protein.
    The actual work entails five specific projects. One will determine the structure of mutant KRAS proteins, the most common form of RAS, when it interacts with molecules within cells. A second project will build on new strategies for blocking KRAS, such as novelpeptides. A third project will use imaging and screening methods to identify and disrupt the complexes that KRAS forms within cells. A fourth goal is to map the surface of cells with KRAS mutations because this could suggest proteins or peptides that could be targeted with antibodies or nanoparticles. Finally, for a fifth project, NCI wants to use so-called synthetic lethal screens, which use tools such as siRNA(molecules that block gene transcription)to discover combinations of proteins that cancer cells with mutated RAS need to survive.
    The advisers were enthusiastic about the project and voted to move ahead, although they had some questions, for example, about how intellectual property agreements would work. William Sellers of Novartis said that the RAS project could serve as a model for tackling other proteins that aren’t easy to block with a drug. It could also attract researchers who wouldn’t otherwise be interested because the problem is "old" and won’t result in a paper in Science or Nature, Sellers said. "For all those reasons, it’s fantastic. "
What might hinder the process of the RAS project?
选项 A、Overenthusiasm from advertisers.
B、Intellectual property problems.
C、Indifference from researchers.
D、Difficulty in forming papers.
答案B
解析 推理判断题。根据题干关键词hinder和RAS project定位到第六段第一句。该句表明，顾问们虽然对这一项目充满热情，但却对知识产权问题有所顾虑。由此可知，对于这种新型的合作研究方式，知识产权问题尚未解决，因此选[B]。文中没有提到关于顾问们过于热情的内容，故排除[A]；该段第三句提到，有些科研人员本来没有兴趣，但这一次也会被吸引，故排除[C]；虽然该段第三句提到了这一科研项目不容易形成论文，但该句也说科研人员仍然会被吸引，可见，这不是阻碍针对RAS研究的主要问题，故排除[D]。
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