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Chapter 72: The Conqueror of AIDS (6)

“Then can it be done at our hospital as well? Is it turning into a next-generation hospital? “We can’t go that far because we lack the know-hows, and it’s not like we hired any stem cell technicians. But we can get A-Bio scientists to use this place if we change the facilities a little. Then, AIDS patients in Germany won’t have to go all the way to Korea.”

“...”

“The WHO said that they will fund the renovation of hospital facilities around the world. In other words, we are using it as an outpost so that the A-Bio headquarters can use it for the eradication of HIV.”

“I see.”

For some reason, Gero Hutter felt very moved.

“This is a war on HIV. The WHO declared war, and the commanding officer is Doctor Young-Joon. Karamchand Pharmatics is supplying the munitions,” Horkheimer said. “You are the only doctor who has destroyed that virus before. If you join them, the hospital will fully support you. How does that sound? Will you accept the new technology?”

Doctors were different from scientists. Scientists discovered truths hidden in the natural world, and they found joy in inventing a new technology. On the other hand, doctors were more interested in treating patients than new things; they were quite conservative towards new technology, just like how Hong Ju-Hee, the doctor from the newborn intensive care unit, contemplated for a long time before using Veratex on Blue. It was because it was their fault if something went wrong with the patient.

It was true that the patient could live with drugs like Karampia, and if they were a citizen of a developed country like Germany, they could live for a very long time. But what if they pushed for a bone marrow transplant as treatment and something went wrong? It was pretty common to see drugs that were successful in clinical trials failing in actual hospital settings. On top of that, if it was a unique new drug that had undergone high-level techniques of designing stem cells and manipulating genes?

As a doctor, Gero Hutter knew that there were risks. Horkheimer was asking him because he knew that as well. Usually, they would see if it went well in other hospitals before adopting it. But he still remembered the feeling he felt when he could no longer see HIV in Timothy’s body. It was a great elation and joy, and an infinite sense of victory at the fact he destroyed a difficult enemy like AIDS. That was more intense and stronger than any other reward he had ever gotten in his life as a doctor.

“I will go.”

Gero Hutter made a decision. He was going to take on a part of this project. There were definitely risks and it wasn’t going to be easy, but he wanted to do it. As a doctor, he had to do it.

“Please make a stem cell research facility at our hospital. Please tell Doctor Ryu that the medical school at LMU[1] in Germany is with him.”

* * *

As Young-Joon’s three papers published in Science blew up in a row, the world began to focus on A-Bio again. Everyone now knew where HIV eradication, the huge project of the WHO, began from. In fact, the project proposer on the official documents released by the WHO was Young-Joon as well. His name was being discussed on many broadcasting networks.

This project drew a lot of attention from the general public. After the WHO’s announcement, AIDS ranked higher in the Google\'s searched term ranking as compared to porn. Of course, the web was going crazy over the paper as well.

—This science is out of this world.

—I’m getting so high on national prestige I don’t even have to get drunk or smoke. All I have to do is watch the news.

—I woke up to see Ryu Young-Joon permanently eradicating something that was incurable up until yesterday. Did he take a time machine again?

—A HIV vaccine, treatment, and cure all at once! It’s all-inclusive.

—A man who makes the WHO move… Who are you?

—At this speed, cancer will disappear in ten years LOL

—But people’s sex lives are already promiscuous. Isn’t it going to run wild when HIV is eradicated?

└It doesn’t matter for you since you don’t get any either way.

—I watched Bohemian Rhapsody yesterday. Freddie Mercury would have lived longer if Ryu Young-Joon was born a little bit earlier. How unfortunate.

—Ryu Young-Joon is actually an alien. I saw it for myself.

“Hey, your fan club is going crazy right now,” Park Joo-Hyuk said. He was having lunch with Young-Joon in his office.

“Do you want me to read it?”

“No,” Young-Joon replied briefly as he read something on his phone.

“This is super entertaining though. Hey, there’s a photo of you sitting in a time machine, too.”

“...”

“Are your eyes glued to your phone? Who are you texting? I’ll let you off the hook if it’s a girl.”

“I’m reading a paper.”

Park Joo-Hyuk peeked at Young-Joon’s phone, then sat back, clicking his tongue.

“You’re addicted to work, seriously. You’re either in a meeting or reading papers, aren’t you?”

“I do experiments now.”

“Oh, right. You have to draw chimpanzee blood, right?”

“I’m done with that one. It has to go into clinical trials now.”

“What’s going on with the vaccine? Is that in clinical trials?”

“It’s in the preclinical phase right now. But it will happen soon because we have all the strategies planned out. Good data, too. Actually, I have to go to a meeting in the afternoon because of that.”

“A meeting? With A-Gen?”

Park Joo-Hyuk tilted his head in confusion.

“A-Gen is in it, but there’s one more.”

“Where?”

“The International Vaccine Institute.”

It felt like international agencies would only be in places like New York or Geneva, but there were dozens of places that had offices in Korea. Surprisingly, there was an office that acted as the headquarters for an organization under the UN: it was the International Vaccine Institute located within the Research Park at Jungyoon University.

Like most public interest organizations, it wasn’t very big. There were also only one hundred forty scientists from sixteen countries, and thirty of them were Korean. To be honest, their research and development infrastructure was a little lacking compared to transnational pharmaceutical companies like A-Gen.

However, the International Vaccine Institute had excellent public confidence. It was convenient to carry out international clinical trials as they were an international agency, and people trusted in them because they were a public interest organization. On top of that, they had recently developed and gained approval for a new product that reduced the cost of the cholera vaccine, which was originally thirty dollars, to one dollar. They distributed that to citizens in cholera-stricken areas such as Asia and Africa in 2009 and gained considerable recognition from developing countries. Other than that, they had conducted programs like DOMI, the Diseases of the Most Impoverished, to destroy typhoid fever and dysentery. They were a successful international institute.

Then what about AIDS? The International Vaccine Institute hadn’t touched AIDS yet. But four years ago, Doctor Jason Kim was appointed as the new Director-General. He was a world-renowned expert on AIDS research and vaccine development. He had written over one hundred forty papers. He was someone who was selected by Vaccine Nation as one of the the Fifty Most Influential Persons In Vaccines. For a long time, he wanted to develop a HIV vaccine. Although, he hadn’t made any progress yet because it was so difficult.

“Director-General Jason and A-Gen will do collaborative research. A-Bio will provide the key technology, and A-Gen’s scientists will develop it using A-Gen’s facilities,” Young-Joon said. “And the International Vaccine Institute will take that to international clinical trials and supply it to the entire world.

* * *

Jason Kim, the Director-General of the International Vaccine Institute, was having tea with two visitors. It was Yoon Dae-Sung, the CEO of A-Gen, and Nicholas Kim, the CTO.

Jason said, “Karamchand and other Indian pharmaceutical companies will mass-produce treatment using a new production method, A-Bio will develop a bone marrow transplant treatment that can cure AIDS, and we will make the vaccine. It looks nice.”

“A-Gen has already developed two kinds of vaccines before. And we have sufficient facilities for vaccine development,” Nicholas said.

“But a vaccine for HIV was an unbeatable fortress. Will Doctor Ryu’s idea really work?” Yoon Dae-Sung asked.

The human body produced these things called antibodies when a pathogen entered from the outside. It was like a natural drug that was automatically produced in the body. Like how different medicine was prescribed for different diseases, the human body also prescribed different antibodies for different types of pathogens.

If it was the first time the pathogen was infecting the body? There were no antibodies for that pathogen in the body. As such, white blood cells would fight it to death, analyze the components, and design and produce new types of antibodies. This process took a bit of time, but the next time the same pathogen came into the body, it could be quickly taken care of as the body already had antibodies. People who were bedridden for two weeks and about to die during the first infection would just feel a little tired during the second, and they would feel fine after a good night’s rest. Simply put, they would not be infected.

Vaccination was a technique that artificially created antibodies in the body. They would damage pathogens so that they could not cause diseases, then put them in the body to train white blood cells to design and produce antibodies.

But for AIDS, that training wasn’t easy. Even if they put in damaged HIV, they would be infected if they were exposed to it again. Because of this, HIV vaccines that had been developed in the past had failed.

“What do you think, Doctor Jason, as the greatest expert in AIDS and vaccinations?” Nicholas asked.

“Just looking at the data in the paper Doctor Ryu published in Science, I think it has potential,” Jason said.

Knock knock.

Jason’s secretary knocked on his door.

“Doctor Ryu is here.”

The three of them stood up right away. Young-Joon, who opened the door and came in, looked a little tired, but his eyes were bright.

For some reason, Nicholas felt proud. He hadn’t done anything to help Young-Joon’s growth, but he was pleased as the young man, whom he had known before he got famous, was growing at an astonishing speed. Now, he was big enough to have a meeting with the Director-General of the International Vaccine Institute, and the CEO and CTO of A-Gen. He was good enough to move international health agencies and carry out a global healthcare project. But this man’s growth wasn’t going to stop here as he had more things to do in the future.

“I will explain the HIV vaccine project. After I hand over the technology and preclinical data today, A-Gen and the International Vaccine Institute can continue the rest,” Young-Joon said as he handed out the presentation.

“What is this?” Yoon Dae-Sung asked as he held up the document. There were diagrams of seventeen types of antigens on it.

“The reason why past attempts to develop an HIV vaccine failed is simple,” Young-Joon said. “It’s because HIV evolves rapidly. Even if we administer a vaccine and create antibodies against the virus, HIV will quickly adapt to it. It will evolve to a variant that has resistance to that antibody.”

“That’s right.”

This had already been reported in his paper, and Yoon Dae-Sung, Nicholas, and Jason had all read that paper already.

“Then, it is actually simple. We just have to make an antibody against that variant with the vaccine.”

Viruses were faster than vaccines. Even if an antibody that was made from a vaccine chased after the virus, it would run away faster. No matter how great the vaccine was, it would never be able to catch the virus.

But if another vaccine was in the escape route of the virus? If an antibody against a variant that had resistance to the previous antibodies already existed in the body? The way for police cars that were slower than the perpetrator’s sportscar to catch them was to corner them from all sides. Like this, they would create many different types of antibodies at once and not give the virus room to escape.

“In the paper, you used four different types of vaccines. I saw the animal experimentation data that ninety percent of HIV could be prevented,” Jason said in astonishment. “Your idea to track the virus’ evolution pattern and create vaccines against that to use all at once is revolutionary, and your ability to actually perform that is shocking as well. Should we do the clinical trial now?”

“In the paper, we put out animal experimentation data that show the vaccine, which catches the four variant patterns, prevents as much as ninety percent of the virus. We only did that much because we didn’t have enough time. But I added more from there. We got more variant patterns,” Young-Joon said.

For a moment, Jason felt his head spin.

‘Wait. So those antibodies on the documents he just handed out are…’

“There are seventeen in total,” Young-Joon said. “It is a vaccine that can catch all the possible early and mid-term variant patterns that can occur in HIV.”

This insane act of being able to analyze and predict a virus’ evolution pattern was already shocking progress. It was amazing that Young-Joon had found four targets already, but seventeen?

‘He found seventeen? Is this true? Is this possible with current biology?’

“With one shot, people won’t be infected by HIV even if you directly inject it into the blood,” Young-Joon said. “We tested it on one hundred mice and not even one was infected. Now, A-Gen can do chimpanzee experiments, and the International Vaccine Institute can begin clinical trials.”

1. The acronym for Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, a prestigious university in Germany. ☜