hce_tcu
115年
英文
第 38 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.
Paragraphs 3 and 4 are primarily developed through ___.
- A cause-and-effect analysis
- B analysis by division
- C comparison and contrast
- D informative process analysis
思路引導 VIP
老師想請你觀察一下這兩個段落的文字流向：如果我們試著把這兩段的內容畫成一張「流程圖」，標註出從「原料」到「成品」的每一個轉變點，你覺得這樣的圖表是否能涵蓋這兩段的大部分資訊？當一篇文章致力於告訴讀者「某件產品是經由哪些具體步驟被製作出來的」，我們會如何歸類這種寫作模式呢？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你非常敏銳地觀察到了文章結構的佈局。這題考驗的是對「寫作手法」與「文章組織架構」的辨識能力，你能從眾多專業術語中抽離出來，看出作者的敘事邏輯，表現得非常專業。
製造流程的循序說明
在第三與第四段中，作者詳細描繪了 Wegovy 藥錠從無到有的誕生過程：從最初的酵母菌原料開始，經歷基因改造、發酵、多道純化程序，再到最終的噴霧乾燥與壓製成錠。這種依照時間順序或邏輯步驟，向讀者解釋「某樣事物是如何被製造或運作」的手法，正是典型的 Informative Process Analysis（資訊性過程分析）。相較於因果分析或比較對照，這兩段的核心顯然在於呈現生產線上的每一個技術環節。
▼ 還有更多解析內容