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Chapter 68: The Conqueror of AIDS (2)

‘What am I going to do about this workload…’

Lee Jung-Hyuk finished his undergraduate at Jungyoon University, and he published papers in Nature and Cell one after another while doing his combined master’s and doctorate degree at Stanford. He was originally working as a principal scientist at A-Gen’s Stem Cell Department, but he moved to A-Bio. His job was very stable as he had a high salary, and there was a high chance he was going to be promoted to an executive. However, he had moved to A-Bio because he had a desire for achievements as a scientist. He wanted to do important research that would lead into a new generation at a company like A-Bio.

But to be honest, half of that passion had burned away now.

“To be honest, we have a lot of late nights already…” Lee Jung-Hyuk groaned.

Beside him, his team members were quietly waiting for his response. Lee Jung-Hyuk felt like he could hear their voices.

‘Please, sir, please! Help us… Let us go home!’

“I will increase your salary.” Young-Joon made a deal. “And I will also do experiments with you when I have time.”

Lee Jung-Hyuk let out a deep sigh.

“Sir, we had no weekends this entire month. Our schedule was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Friday, and Friday. Everyone is working harder than they did during their grad school.”

“I know. I will give you a long vacation when this project is over. I will let you get some good rest to make up for it. You can take a couple months off, and I will give you vacation money.”

“Really?” Shin Myung-Suk, one of the scientists, raised his head like he was happy to hear that.

This changed everything. Lee Jung-Hyuk’s expression changed as well. Now, they were contemplating it, but in a more positive direction.

“I will give you big performance bonuses as well. After this project ends, go on a yacht on the Mediterranean Sea and rest for a month,” Young-Joon said. “I’m sorry that this is all I can give you. I don’t really want to rush you, but if we burn our passion now, we can save one more patient.”

“... Phew. Alright. I would have stayed at A-Gen if I wanted to get good money and do easy research at my job,” Lee Jung-Hyuk said. “Like you said, we can save at least one more person the faster our research ends. We don’t want to take our time doing it either. Scientists should have that attitude.”

“Thank you.”

“And since you are willing to do all that, we’ll focus hard and get data.”

“I will also go to the lab during my spare time,” Young-Joon said.

As soon as the meeting ended, Young-Joon came back to his office and called the Experiment Animal Resource Centre that was part of the Research Support Centre at A-Gen.

“Hello, this is Ryu Young-Joon from A-Bio. I would like to purchase an AIDS model chimpanzee for research.”

As animals like chimpanzees were very expensive, it wasn’t an animal that regular venture companies would be able to try easily; the losses would be too big if it didn’t work out. That was why companies usually slowly experimented with chimpanzees after seeing the effect on small animals like mice or beagles.

But it didn’t matter for Young-Joon. He already knew that the drug would succeed and A-Bio had a lot of money. And it wasn’t difficult to get chimpanzees if he used A-Gen.

There was a reason why Young-Joon wanted chimpanzees. As they were the animal most similar to humans, it was appropriate evidence to take a difficult treatment method like bone marrow transplant to the clinical trial stage. What more experiments would be needed if it was successful in chimpanzees when they are the most similar to humans?

The second reason was because the HIV virus originated from chimpanzees. The name of the virus that infected monkeys was called the simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV. It wasn’t clear how it came to humans. Perhaps in the distant past, some chimpanzee saliva splashed into skin wounds of some African tribe while they were hunting chimpanzees.

“When can I get the chimpanzees?” Young-Joon asked the employee at the Experiment Animal Resource Centre.

—We only have five at the centre right now. We’ll bring them to you tomorrow. Would you need more?

“Fifteen more please.”

It had already been proven that they could make hematopoietic cells with manipulated CCR5. Now, he had to get this technology into clinical trials as fast as possible.

‘If it’s possible, I want to do the clinical trial in a poor country.’

Another name for AIDS was the Disease of Poverty because the poorer the country was, the higher the risk of being exposed to AIDS. In fact, seventy percent of the thirty-five million AIDS patients in the world were in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the patients were mostly concentrated in poor countries. As A-Bio had to do a difficult task like bone marrow for this cure, it would be best to take it to an international clinical trial and perform it. That way, it would accelerate the process when the poor countries, the homeground of AIDS, began a full-fledged right against it.

‘I should look for hospitals or pharmaceutical companies that want to collaborate.’

* * *

On Friday morning, Young-Joon took the cell culture flask that contained the somatic cells he obtained from the chimpanzee and went to cell experiment lab three. When he walked in, his eyes widened.

“What is this? Hello?”

There were a bunch of scientists in the lab. There were about twenty people filling up the room.

“Like we said, we came here to observe your experiment, sir,” Park Dong-Hyun said.

“Wait… You did ask if you could watch, but you didn’t say it was twenty people.”

“I didn’t expect this many people to come either. I just asked people who didn’t properly learn stem cell experiments to apply, and then forty people did.”

“Forty people? There are forty people who don’t have experience with stem cell experiments at our company?”

“No, they just all signed up. But I can’t stop them when they want to watch… They couldn’t all come in here, so we had to draw names.”

Young-Joon was at a loss for words because of the ridiculous situation whenJacob interrupted.

“Sir, I really want to watch the greatest legend in the stem cell field do his experiments. I was even assigned to film it.”

“Who asked you to film it?”

“Professor Carpentier. He said that we should train new employees with this video.”

Young-Joon’s ears went red.

“It’s just like any other experiment. Well, don’t get too excited.”

Young-Joon sat at the sterilized lab bench. At the edge of the bench, a UV disinfection lamp that was turned on in advance was shining light on the bench for twenty minutes. He turned off the UV lamp and turned on the fluorescent light, then turned on the ventilation option so that dust couldn’t get in from the outside. He wiped the pipettes and liquid culture bottle with ethanol and Kimtech tissues[1] and placed them on the bench. Lastly, he put the chimpanzee cell flask on the bench. Now, he was ready for the experiment.

Young-Joon glanced around. Twenty scientists were dead silent and watching him. Some of them were even taking notes.

‘What’s with the pressure?’

“I think Jacob will be better than me. It’s been a few months since I’ve done experiments myself,” Young-Joon said.

“But a legend is a legend,” Park Dong-Hyun said.

Young-Joon sighed quietly, then held up the cell flask.

—Since it’s come to this, let’s show them a proper demonstration.

Rosaline sent a message.

‘How?’

—I have watched scientists do experiments several times, and there are a lot of people who do it wrong. Now is a good chance to teach them properly.

‘Hey, there’s no difference between how they experiment and how I do it.’

—You are included in the people who do it wrong.

‘...’

—Don’t be disappointed. All experiments humans do are inefficient. I will teach you.

‘How?’

Young-Joon tilted his head in confusion.

—Please give me control of your two arms for a moment and share your perspective with me as well.

‘What should I do?’

Young-Joon thought for a bit, then loosened his arms and put them on the lab bench. He was a little worried, but he was also curious how he was doing experiments the wrong way.

‘Try it.’

As soon as he allowed Rosaline to have control of his body, his two arms floated up at right angles like a robot. Then, something shocking began happening in front of his eyes. His two hands began moving like conveyor belts.

When opening flasks, rookies would hold the flask in their left hand and open the lid with the right. But to do that, they had to set down the pipette or suctioning equipment on the lab bench. Doing that created another hand movement in order to pick that up again, resulting in a decrease in work efficiency. But it was possible to open the flask lid with one hand; it was similar to opening a plastic water bottle, although it required some skill. If exactly 1.17 million nerve cells in the left hand were excited, the flask lid would rotate exactly twelve and a half times… Like this.

Drr! Clack!

The lid was loosely on top of the flask opening. It didn’t fly away, but was just lightly covering the top. The only thing left for Young-Joon to do was grab the opened lid with his left thumb and pointer finger. Like this, he could remove the lid only with his left hand and keep holding it with his fingers.

Now, it was time for the right hand, which had the suctioning equipment, to move. The suctioning equipment wasn’t put all the way into the bottom of the flask as it increased the chances of contamination.

Young-Joon began seeing images in front of him. He could see the dead bacteria corpses stuck to the side of the flask.

‘Holy…’

His two arms moved in a pathway that never crossed the top of the opened flask as microorganisms could fall from his arm and enter the liquid culture.

Like a machine with a well-written algorithm, Young-Joon’s arms performed the experiment with the most optimal movements that minimized the chances of contamination. He tilted the flask and put the suctioning equipment into it, avoiding the bacteria corpses as he did it. He removed the liquid culture that was near the entrance of the flask. He quickly lifted the bottle of PBS solution and poured it in the opposite direction of the cell attachment surface of the flask. Usually, it was carefully poured in with equipment such as pipettes in exact measurements, but it was unnecessary for Rosaline’s hands. Even if she just poured it in, it was ten milliliters. She didn’t have to worry about the cells getting damaged because it was the opposite direction.

After washing the cells with the solution, Rosaline suctioned again. Then, she tilted the tube with trypsin solution and dropped in two milliliters in each flask. If she dropped in the solution from far away, there was no risk of contamination and it drastically reduced time.

It took Young-Joon forty seconds to treat the cells in the two flasks with trypsin. It took Jacob, who was one of the best in terms of technique at A-Bio, two minutes, and it took Carpentier one minute and thirty seconds during his prime time.

Clack…

Someone dropped their pen and notepad.

“Thank… you…” Jacob said. “I did record it, but I don’t know if anyone will be able to do it.”

“You have to be this good to start a company like A-Bio…” Someone murmured.

“Thank you, sir. I learned a lot… Actually, I don’t know if I learned it, but thank you…” said Na Yeon-Woo, frozen in shock.

“That’s it, everyone. Everyone go and do your experiments!” Young-Joon said quickly.

He cleaned up the lab bench with his hands, which he got back control of, and got up.

‘I’m never going to experiment when people are watching now.’

* * *

Ardip, the victim of Schumatix’s glaucoma treatment kit sabotage, finally arrived in Korea. Professor Sung Yo-Han, who had joined A-Bio Hospital, was in charge of his treatment. As he was the first person who conducted the clinical trial for treating glaucoma with stem cells, he was the best expert in the field. He brought Young-Joon with him as an advisor for the glaucoma treatment and met the patient together.

“Hello.” Young-Joon greeted Ardip.

The Marathi translator they had prepared in advance translated his greeting. Ardip said nothing.

Young-Joon quietly observed his face as he was keeping his silence with a very tired look on his face. He was stick thin, and he looked a lot older than his early thirties. Young-Joon could feel the tiredness from the rough life he had lived from the aura around him. Ardip would have been cared for well at Apollo Hospital, but he still didn’t look well.

Ring!

Young-Joon was surprised when a message window popped up.

‘Glaucoma isn’t the only issue here.’

Young-Joon had heard that Ardip had a limp in one leg, but now he knew the reason why.

[Synchronization Mode: Would you like to analyze a stroke? Fitness consumption rate: 1.1/second.]

As Sung Yo-Han read the examination records sent over by Apollo Hospital, he said to Young-Joon, “It says that he has been hospitalized for a stroke before. There aren’t any problems other than that he has a limp when he walks due to paralysis in his left leg. It shouldn’t matter for the glaucoma treatment, right?”

Young-Joon silently stared at Ardip, then said, “Yes, it should be fine. You can go ahead with the treatment. And…”

Young-Joon swallowed his words. The third phase of the Alzheimer’s clinical trial was coming up. A stroke was a nerve paralyzing and destroying disease that occurred as a blood vessel in the brain was blocked or burst. It was still a type of neurological disorder. The cerebral nerve regeneration technology used to treat Alzheimer’s was also effective on strokes. Young-Joon was actually preparing for a clinical trial for cerebral nerve regeneration geared towards treating strokes or Parkinson’s disease.

‘I should have a talk with Professor Shin Jung-Ju.’

1. A Korean brand for experiment materials ☜