hce_tcu
115年
英文
第 37 題
📖 題組：
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Novo Nordisk’s oral version of Wegovy, making it the first of the popular GLP-1 medications to get the green light as a pill for weight loss. People who want to lose weight and are prescribed Wegovy now have the option of taking a tablet daily vs. or injecting themselves with the drug once a week. They’re expected to lose about the same amount of weight with either version: 16% to 17% of their starting body weight. The plant, just outside of Raleigh, is running around the clock to produce bottles of pills in four different doses, which have been available at retail stores and online pharmacies since the first week of January. “Obesity has become a consumer-oriented disease,” Novo Nordisk’s CEO Mike Doustdar tells TIME. “We’re embracing that.” The Wegovy pill starts with a fungus; specifically, the same yeast used to make bread, called Saccharomyces cerevisiae. But instead of fermenting sugars or grains to make bread rise, the yeast cells are genetically engineered at Novo Nordisk’s facility in Clayton, N.C., to produce a protein that undergoes fermentation in several four-story-tall tanks, then multiple purification steps over about a month to produce semaglutide. This compound mimics a human hormone that regulates appetite by working in the reward center of the brain. It can help people feel full and reduce feelings of hunger. After the fermentation and purification process, semaglutide forms a beige paste resembling pancake batter. In one of the few manual steps in the largely automated production, technicians scrape the paste from large funnels and freeze it at -20°C, where it keeps for up to five years. In the final step, the paste is thawed and further purified into a liquid at a high temperature, which is then spray-dried into a fine white powder—similar to the way snowmaking machines turn hot water into snow. That powder is then pressed into Wegovy tablets. While this semaglutide pill is the first to treat obesity, it isn’t the first that Novo Nordisk has made. Its initial semaglutide pill, Rybelsus, was approved in 2019 to treat diabetes, as an alternative to the company’s Ozempic, which patients must inject weekly. Turning Ozempic into an oral pill required finding a way to protect the drug from the hostile environment of the stomach just long enough for it to be absorbed by the body. Still, the pill is generally not as effective as Ozempic. When diabetes patients noticed they were losing weight on semaglutide, Novo Nordisk and other companies began to study the compound and related ones for their potential effects on obesity. In 2021, the FDA approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy to treat obesity, and developing the Wegovy pill became the next challenge. This time, the researchers created a proprietary fatty-acid derivative to better navigate the difficult environment of the stomach. Once the tablet reaches the stomach, it creates temporary changes in the permeability of part of the stomach lining that stops enzymes from breaking down the drug, while giving semaglutide enough time to be absorbed. To maximize the pill’s effectiveness, people should take it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach with up to half a glass of water with no other drinks, food, or other medications for at least 30 minutes, so nothing will interfere with the pill’s activity. The Wegovy pill has an early advantage in hitting pharmacies first, but competitor Eli Lilly, which makes Zepbound, is waiting for an FDA decision about its weight-loss pill orforglipron. Both companies are eager to introduce their oral versions of weight-loss drugs since pills are generally less expensive to produce (and more appealing) than injections, and that should make them more affordable.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Novo Nordisk’s oral version of Wegovy, making it the first of the popular GLP-1 medications to get the green light as a pill for weight loss. People who want to lose weight and are prescribed Wegovy now have the option of taking a tablet daily vs. or injecting themselves with the drug once a week. They’re expected to lose about the same amount of weight with either version: 16% to 17% of their starting body weight. The plant, just outside of Raleigh, is running around the clock to produce bottles of pills in four different doses, which have been available at retail stores and online pharmacies since the first week of January. “Obesity has become a consumer-oriented disease,” Novo Nordisk’s CEO Mike Doustdar tells TIME. “We’re embracing that.” The Wegovy pill starts with a fungus; specifically, the same yeast used to make bread, called Saccharomyces cerevisiae. But instead of fermenting sugars or grains to make bread rise, the yeast cells are genetically engineered at Novo Nordisk’s facility in Clayton, N.C., to produce a protein that undergoes fermentation in several four-story-tall tanks, then multiple purification steps over about a month to produce semaglutide. This compound mimics a human hormone that regulates appetite by working in the reward center of the brain. It can help people feel full and reduce feelings of hunger. After the fermentation and purification process, semaglutide forms a beige paste resembling pancake batter. In one of the few manual steps in the largely automated production, technicians scrape the paste from large funnels and freeze it at -20°C, where it keeps for up to five years. In the final step, the paste is thawed and further purified into a liquid at a high temperature, which is then spray-dried into a fine white powder—similar to the way snowmaking machines turn hot water into snow. That powder is then pressed into Wegovy tablets. While this semaglutide pill is the first to treat obesity, it isn’t the first that Novo Nordisk has made. Its initial semaglutide pill, Rybelsus, was approved in 2019 to treat diabetes, as an alternative to the company’s Ozempic, which patients must inject weekly. Turning Ozempic into an oral pill required finding a way to protect the drug from the hostile environment of the stomach just long enough for it to be absorbed by the body. Still, the pill is generally not as effective as Ozempic. When diabetes patients noticed they were losing weight on semaglutide, Novo Nordisk and other companies began to study the compound and related ones for their potential effects on obesity. In 2021, the FDA approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy to treat obesity, and developing the Wegovy pill became the next challenge. This time, the researchers created a proprietary fatty-acid derivative to better navigate the difficult environment of the stomach. Once the tablet reaches the stomach, it creates temporary changes in the permeability of part of the stomach lining that stops enzymes from breaking down the drug, while giving semaglutide enough time to be absorbed. To maximize the pill’s effectiveness, people should take it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach with up to half a glass of water with no other drinks, food, or other medications for at least 30 minutes, so nothing will interfere with the pill’s activity. The Wegovy pill has an early advantage in hitting pharmacies first, but competitor Eli Lilly, which makes Zepbound, is waiting for an FDA decision about its weight-loss pill orforglipron. Both companies are eager to introduce their oral versions of weight-loss drugs since pills are generally less expensive to produce (and more appealing) than injections, and that should make them more affordable.
The production of semaglutide begins with ___.
- A synthetic laboratory enzymes engineered to mimic human hormones
- B a strain of the bacteria yeast genetically engineered to produce a protein
- C genetically engineered yeast undergoing fermentation
- D a proprietary fatty-acid compound designed for gastric absorption
思路引導 VIP
請仔細閱讀文章第三段的前兩句話，作者提到製作這種藥錠的「起始原料（starts with）」是一種我們在做麵包時也會用到的「生物」，你能找到它的名字嗎？接著，科學家為了讓這個生物生產出特定物質，對它進行了什麼樣的「改造」呢？
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AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你能精準地從長篇閱讀中定位到關鍵訊息，並正確判讀生產流程的起點，顯示你的閱讀理解與資訊檢索能力非常紮實。
生產流程的核心環節
這題的正確答案為 (C) genetically engineered yeast undergoing fermentation（基因改造酵母進行發酵）。根據文章第三段的明確描述，Wegovy 的生產始於一種稱為「釀酒酵母」（Saccharomyces cerevisiae）的真菌。這些酵母細胞經過基因工程（genetically engineered）改造以產生特定蛋白質，接著在巨大的槽罐中進行發酵（fermentation）。你準確掌握了「基因改造」與「發酵」這兩個關鍵步驟，這是解題的核心點。
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