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Chapter 78: A-Bio Cancer Laboratory (2)

‘Ryu Young-Joon…’

David couldn’t attack him with a sloppy move. Young-Joon was a genius in scientific technology and research development, but he was also highly skilled in politics and management. He saw through and prepared for Schuamatix’s sabotage and completely destroyed him by hitting back at just the right time. A huge company like that took fatal damage from just one strike and collapsed. Even if the White House supported them, it wasn’t an easy thing to do. It was because the timing of Young-Joon’s counterattack was so perfect. It gave David goosebumps thinking of how Young-Joon had the CIA ready and just calmly waited for his prey to step on the web.

And he also did a huge performance live on television to put a stop to the anti-vaccine movement. Perhaps Ardip’s press conference was also in his hands. If so, Young-Joon was quite skilled at being a manager. His talent would certainly shine in the American market as well.

‘But the American market won’t be that easy, Doctor Ryu.’

David smiled as he watched a video of Young-Joon’s show again.

‘Attacking straightforward without any tactics and only taking what you need to take…’

A-Bio was never going to be able to monopolize this country, as the issue of competition between companies was not just about new technology.

“Sir.”

Alice, David’s secretary, came to see him.

She said, “I scheduled a meeting with the director of the Office of Science and Technology. It is two days from now, and it is two o’clock.”

“Thank you. Alice…”

“Yes?”

“Do you know how band-aids were first invented?”

“... I’m not sure.”

“About a hundred years ago, there was an employee in charge of purchasing cotton in our purchasing department. Name was John Dickson,” David said. “At the time, John was enjoying his sweet honeymoon, but his wife was a little clumsy, so she used to trip a lot and get cuts all over from a kitchen knife. John always put gauze and tape on his wife’s injuries and treated her.”

Alice tilted her head in confusion. It looked like she was curious why David was telling her this story.

David said, “His biggest concern was what he would do if she got hurt while he was at work. After some thought, Dickson put some gauze in the middle of some medical tape beforehand to make it easy for her to use it when she needed it. That’s the first ever band-aid.”

David slowly rose from his seat. He was sixty and quite old, but the suit he was wearing looked good on his lean and toned body. It was because he had taken care of his health well; David was someone who lived so regularly that his schedule was measured with a ruler and the hand of a clock.

David looked out the window.

“It was a simple invention that combined technology that already existed without using anything new, but it became the best medical item in the twentieth century. The president of Conson & Colson at that time found it and commercialized it in astonishment. It was one of the key products that developed our company into a major company. John Dickson went on to become the vice president.”

“Oh…”

David smiled.

“I just want to talk about that. If you get a boyfriend, Alice, I hope he is someone as sweet as John Dickson.”

“Haha, thank you.”

Alice smiled while she tidied up her hair.

David went outside. He wanted to organize his thoughts while taking a walk.

Conson & Colson was a company that was clearly one of the top companies among the numerous pharmaceutical companies. They had the highest profits in the industry, but it wasn’t because they wielded incredible new technology like A-Bio.

Big money came from little things, did they not? It was just like how Coca-Cola, a beverage brand, was the number one brand in the world. Conson & Colson’s main products were small items like band-aids, painkillers, lotion, or contact lenses. In this sense, Conson & Colson’s business didn’t actually overlap with A-Bio; there wasn’t really much for them to directly conflict over. Actually, they could win-win if Conson & Colson provided things like medical adhesive when A-Bio did procedures like bone marrow transplantation. There were actually directors who were optimistic about the situation.

But not David.

“Now, Ryu Young-Joon is coming to America to make an anticancer drug. What should Conson & Colson do now.”

His heart beat at the entertaining development. David, who didn’t ever have a competitor while leading the number one company in the industry, even felt like he was younger now.

“This man was the first one to open the field of stem cell treatment. He would have had mountains of work to do just with stem cells, but he made a type 2 diabetes cure within a year and got it into clinical trials. He also made a HIV vaccine,” David muttered to himself as he walked on the trail. “And he is coming here to target the anticancer market and swallow up the National Cancer Institute. He already buttered up Director James.”

Everyone thought that Young-Joon was the father of stem cell technology, but David thought differently. To Young-Joon, stem cells were only one of his many items. That was why he did things unrelated to stem cells like a HIV vaccine, a diabetes cure, probiotics, and a pancreatic cancer cure.

‘Ryu Young-Joon will push through to this field sometime.’

He will be Conson & Colson’s biggest enemy. Then, what would be the best point to stop his growth?

‘Anticancer drugs.’

The field that had the most variables in the world. The disease that was more complex and difficult to handle than any other disease. Even a genius like Young-Joon was not going to be able to be confident in everything when overcoming this barrier.

David had no intention of sabotaging him to make him slip; he was going to let them sprint ahead, and all he had to do was climb on top of his shoulders and hold his leash.

Then how? The way that medicine dealt with diseases was divided into three stages:

1. Prevention.

2. Diagnosis.

3. Treatment.

If the disease was cancer, the first stage was usually impossible. Unless the cancer was a rare type that occurred because of a virus like cervical cancer, cancer could not be prevented. The reason that cancer occurred was because people were unlucky. The mutation of a gene, which caused cancer, was completely coincidental. Cancer could happen even if one lived a very healthy life.

And honestly, no one could beat Young-Joon at the third stage. Wasn’t he someone who said he was going to fix pancreatic cancer right away?

But the second stage, the diagnosis market? In the stream of medicine, diagnosis was upstream of treatment. If David controlled the stream there? If he dominated the diagnosis market and then reached out to Young-Joon, he would have no choice but to hold David’s hand.

‘I will tame him while making a cooperative relationship.’

David called his secretary.

“Alice, please contact Illemina and ask for a meeting as soon as possible.”

—Illemina?

It was the best company in the world for DNA analysis. Illemina had invented a technology that analyzed DNA in the blood, and if there were cancer cells in the body, a miniscule amount of their DNA would flow through the blood vessels. If he could find it and analyze it, they would be able to diagnose the presence of cancer without an endoscopy. Although, no one had tried it or commercialized it yet.

David could see a few big pictures in his head. He would place Illemina’s DNA analysis equipment in each hospital and analyze the patient’s DNA using that. He would monopolize the diagnosis of cancer in all patients. Then, he could have the upper hand over Young-Joon. Young-Joon’s technology would be used when being treated at the hospital, but the one sending the patient to the hospital would be Conson & Colson. In that world, Young-Joon’s anticancer drugs would only be able to play a limited role; even if he made an anticancer drug that could cure end-stage pancreatic cancer, all patients would already be diagnosed when it was at its early stage.

* * *

Young-Joon finished a few meetings hecticly. Now, he was talking to the Life Creation Team.

“How is the liver organoid going?”

“It’s a dead end…” Park Dong-Hyun said in a dejected voice.

Cheon Ji-Myung added, “We can differentiate a stem cell into a liver cell. But the hand technique required in the process of cultivating it from the matrix to the tissue is too hard. We use fifty microliters of the culture liquid, and we have to stick it exactly in the duct cells that are in the middle. That part’s a little difficult.”

“It is probably possible to do if we experiment like you, but… We can’t do it like that,” Park Dong-Hyun said as he thought back to Young-Joon’s experiment.

Young-Joon, who thought for a moment, said, “Let’s put that on pause for a moment and let’s do something else.”

“What?” Park Dong-Hyun asked.

“The KCDC held a project contest while spearheading a new business. Do you know about it?”

“The dengue virus?” Jung Hae-Rim asked.

“Oh, you know about it?”

Young-Joon was surprised. It was because frontline scientists were too busy doing their assigned experiments that they had less interest in other projects or national ones.

“Haha.”

Jung Hae-Rim’s chest puffed up.

“You should know this if you are a scientist. Try harder, everyone,” Jung Hae-Rim said with a proud face.

“What kind of project is it exactly?” Cheon Ji-Myung asked Young-Joon.

“It is to develop a vaccine, a treatment, or a technology to diagnose the infection for the dengue virus. We are going to work on developing a diagnostic technology,” Young-Joon replied.

“Diagnostic?”

“Yes. Actually, I had a meeting with the KCDC. They asked me if I could eradicate dengue fever like AIDS.”

“So?”

“I told them that we can’t start anything new because we have too many projects going on.”

“But are you still going to do it?” Jung Hae-Rim asked like she was nervous.

“The reason the KCDC is interested in dengue fever is because Korea is being threatened by the dengue virus,” Young-Joon said.

The dengue virus was originally a virus that mosquitoes transmitted in hot regions like Vietnam. But as the average temperature rose due to climate change, its occurrence began rising to the North.

“The dengue virus has already arrived in Jeju Island. There was a confirmed case last year.”

“That’s true.” Park Dong-Hyun nodded.

“But why are we developing a diagnostic technology? Not a treatment or a vaccine?” Bae Sun-Mi asked.

“We can’t afford to develop treatments or vaccines and put them through clinical trials.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. You all have to get back to liver organoids after this, right?”

“Oh…”

The team all covered their faces with their hands. Watching them, Young-Joon smiled.

“Dengue fever doesn’t actually need a special treatment. It usually gets better after a week. The problem is dengue hemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome, and they require intensive treatment. So the solution to control this disease is accurate diagnosis,” Young-Joon said. “We have to develop a very cheap, fast, and accurate diagnostic kit. We will be able to secure a tremendous advantage in controlling this infectious disease.”

“Alright.”

Young-Joon opened a PowerPoint file on his laptop.

“This is the base technology for this diagnostic kit. It’s only a sketch of the main idea, so it needs to be developed more,” said Young-Joon.

“What’s the logic behind it?”

“Do you remember Cas9?”

Cas9: it was a pair of gene scissors that could find a precise location in the huge, three billion letters of human DNA and cut it.

“The fact that it can cut at one exact location means that it can help identify the presence of DNA that has the information of that location,” Young-Joon said. “With this, we can cut the DNA of the dengue virus that is floating around in the blood. If it’s cut, the patient is infected with dengue fever, and they are not infected if there is no reaction.”

“Wow…” the Life Creation Team exclaimed. It was surprising that gene scissors could be used this way.

“How long did you do “Think Big” for?” Park Dong-Hyun asked.[1]

“I didn’t do anything like that. And there’s one more thing to do with this diagnostic technology. I’m thinking of diagnosing cancer with this on top of dengue fever.”

“Cancer?”

The Life Creation Team’s eyes widened.

Young-Joon explained, “If we have cancer, the cancer cell’s DNA flows through our blood vessels, although it’s a really small amount. We can catch that with Cas9 with the same logic as dengue fever.”

“...”

“I will freeze-dry the Cas9 protein and make a kit with fluorescent material. If you drop someone’s blood on it, the kit will change color as it cuts the DNA of the dengue virus of cancer cells.”

“So, the thing you are trying to make is…”

“This diagnostic kit is like a pregnancy test,” Young-Joon said. “It will be sold in places like convenience stores or grocery stores. Regular people will be able to buy it, and they will be able to diagnose what kind of disease they have if they put one drop of their blood on it with the included blood-collection needle.”

“...”

“They won’t have to go to the hospital, and they don’t have to borrow expensive equipment from DNA analysis companies like Illemina. We are going to make them doctors in everyday life.”

“Oh my god…”

“The biggest problem with pancreatic cancer is that it is not only difficult to treat, but also difficult to diagnose,” Young-Joon said.

1. ”Think Big” offers a variety of educational content for all age groups, but mostly children. Their content includes workbooks and worksheets for children. ☜