Chapter 107: Laboratory One (9)

—But Ryu Young-Joon, I don’t know for sure if I will be able to cure Kim Hyun-Taek or not.

Rosaline said.

—I still haven’t accurately diagnosed what this pathogen is. I have to inspect it closer.

‘Closer?’

—I am going to go inside Kim Hyun-Taek’s body for a moment.

‘Can you do that?’

—It should be fine. There’s nothing that will mess with me except that pathogen anyways. Do you think something like Kim Hyun-Taek’s immune cells can go up against me?

Rosaline said.

—It’s kind of gross that I am going inside the body of a man in his fifties whose body was wrecked by alcohol, cigarettes, lack of exercise, and chronic tiredness, but this is the only way.

‘Alright.’

—Then I’ll be back.

Rosaline climbed onto his bed again and stuck her finger in Kim Hyun-Taek’s mouth. Then, her body slipped right in as if she was being sucked in by a black hole.

‘Ugh.’

Rosaline groaned. He stunk of cigarettes right from his esophagus. Before moving into the stomach, she dug into the mucous membrane at a good point and moved into the blood vessels.

‘I will share my perspective with you.’

Rosaline consumed one point of fitness and showed Young-Joon the inside of Kim Hyun-Taek’s blood vessels. It was filled with cholesterol and fat.

‘You’ve never seen something like this before, right? It’s probably horrible.’

—Don’t be like that. It’s because of the average Korean man’s work stress and company dinner.

Young-Joon’s voice came through.

‘To be honest, Ryu Young-Joon, your body was no different.’

—Really?

‘It was similar to this when I first arrived. Well, it was bound to be like this since you were an alcoholic back then. Anyways, I’m cleaning your blood vessels every morning and evening. Be grateful.’

—...Thanks.

Rosaline took the vena cava and moved to the heart.

‘The pathogen has not been found yet. Maybe it doesn’t have a physical entity?’

If everything Rosaline thought was right and it was the pathogenicity that fell off her body that infected Kim Hyun-Taek, it may not have a clear physical entity. There was nothing that she could be certain of.

‘All the immune cells have stopped working.’

It was because the doctors had injected an immunosuppressant. If it wasn’t for that, Kim Hyun-Taek’s body might not have been able to withstand it.

Rosaline passed by the huge white blood cells. This time, she took the artery to cross the blood brain barrier and went to the brain.

‘Oh!’

Rosaline was startled.

—What is it?

‘A significant part of the brain has been destroyed. Ugh... This will be difficult to reconstruct even with stem cell therapy.

—When you come out, tell me how damaged it is. Let’s think of a way to cure him.

‘Okay. But it will be difficult to find a way to cure someone who is basically a corpse at my level.’

—We’ll have to increase your level a lot as well.

‘Oh, wait. I found something.’

Rosaline stopped moving. A cloud of black gas was floating around in front of her. It was a strange substance that looked like a coccus or like a protein lump.

‘So this is the pathogen.’

Rosaline observed it more closely. It was definitely not a living being, so it wasn’t active in the body and it also didn’t multiply. As such, it was normal for it to not be that harmful to the body. The reason that Kim Hyun-Taek’s body was this ruined wasn’t actually because of this substance, but the immune cells that reacted to it; it was a type of allergic reaction. However, it was odd that it was so intense that it led to brain death.

‘What is this thing?’

It wasn’t easy to discern what it was even from Rosaline’s perspective, which could analyze the microworld. It felt cloudy, as if something was covering her eyes.

Rosaline cautiously touched the object.

Pff!

Suddenly, steam shot out with the burnt smell of coal.

Crash!

Rosaline, surprised at the sharp protrusions flying towards her, fired an attack reflexively.

[Perforin overexpression by 420%]

Boom!

A hole was blasted through the black, empty ball. With a sound of air deflating, the ball turned white and evaporated. At the same time, a few pieces of debris popped out. They were very small chemical molecules. Rosaline knew these structures.

‘Prednisolone?’

Rosaline tilted her head in confusion. Another type of chemical flowed out. It was pentoxifylline. However, it looked like a tangled mold. She pulled in some water molecules and hydrolyzed them. After cleaning up her area, she went into the blood vessels again. She traveled for a long time and went back the way she came.

—Phaa!

Rosaline, who came out of Kim Hyun-Taek’s body, took a deep breath.

—It was so suffocating in there.

“What happened?” Young-Joon asked.

—I met a pathogen in there.

“And?”

—I touched it, and it tried to attack me.

“Attack? You? So?”

—I got rid of it. It disappeared when I put a hole through it with perforin. Little thing didn’t know who it was up against.

Rosaline puffed up her little chest.

“... Then is Kim Hyun-Taek all better now?”

—You can’t do anything about the explosion just because you caught the terrorists. It’s over for Kim Hyun-Taek.

“Really?”

It was a little upsetting.

—Well, we might be able to cure him if we develop stem cells further. But I can’t think of a good way because my level is too low.

“And the pathogen has been completely destroyed?”

—The ones that were in his body, yes.

* * *

[Kim Hyun-Taek, Laboratory One Director of A–Gen, declared brain-dead due to a sudden stroke.]

The news began spreading. The story that Kim Hyun-Taek collapsed at Lab Six while raising his voice due to having a conflict with Young-Joon was pretty provocative.

—It’s God’s punishment.

—I don’t even feel pity for him because he’s a bastard who doesn’t think other people’s lives are precious.

—Just take him off the ventilator. He’s a waste of oxygen.

The public was cold.

An in-house board meeting was held at A-Gen’s headquarters. Young-Joon was now the lab director of Lab one; it was the best of the best that had seven departments including the Anticancer Drug Research Department, Mobile Diagnostic Device Research Department, Plant-based Pharmaceutical Research Department, and the Protein Manufacturing Research Department. The best research personnel who could be considered the main force of A-Gen was now under Young-Joon.

The scientists at the Anticancer Drug Research Department were having an emergency meeting.

“Principal Kim, what do we do?” said Lead Scientist Hwang Chan-Mi as she grabbed her hair.

They all remembered the day Young-Joon fought with Kim Hyun-Taek at the department and left for the Life Creation Department. When he came out of Director Kim’s office in anger, everyone in the department glanced at him and ignored him. Here, Young-Joon was quite a controversial person; a lot of seniors liked him because he was smart, had passion, and finished his work perfectly, but there were quite a lot of people who didn’t like him because of his tunnel vision and stickler attitude.

“CEO Ryu probably feels betrayed by us, too,” Senior Scientist Kim Hyun-Seok said with a sigh. “But there was nothing we could do about Cellicure. What, would we have embraced Doctor Ryu and fought with Director Kim? How could we do that? Even his girlfriend broke up with him,” Hyun Mi-Ju argued like it was unfair.

“But we could have given him a heads-up about why Cellicure was purchased. No matter how badly we were stepping on his excitement,” said Principal Scientist Kim Joo-Yeon. “I should have carried the ball and done that as the head of the department, but I didn’t pay attention. I should have at least pretended to intervene and protect Ryu Young-Joon when he was being sliced up by Director Kim.”

“It’s not your fault,” Hwang Chan-Mi said.

“Do you think CEO Ryu has any feelings towards us?” Lead Park Shi-Joon asked.

“I don’t know.”

Click.

The door opened and someone walked into the office.

“Hello.”

It was Young-Joon.

“Oh!”

“Uh...”

All the document folders that were on the table fell off as Kim Hyun-Seok, Hyun Mi-Ju and others scrambled to get up in surprise. In that chaos, Hwang Chan-Mi’s elbow hit Kim Joo-Yeon’s phone, and it slid off the table.

Snatch!

Young-Joon, who caught the phone like it was nothing while coming their way, held it out.

“It’s been a while.”

“H-Hello.”

Kim Joo-Yeon took the phone. The scientists all greeted him nervously.

“Sir, I thought you were in a meeting with the other departments...”

“I’m done now. I had about thirty minutes left before my last meeting, so I decided to stop by.”

Young-Joon was having meetings with every department at Lab One. It was to see the new projects that were going on at each department now that he was appointed as the new director.

“Oh, yes... Haha...” Kim Joo-Yeon laughed awkwardly. There was a heavy silence in the room.

“Since I know the research data of the Anticancer Drug Research Department until six months ago, I think I just need a short briefing for about twenty minutes. Shall we just have the meeting now?” Young-Joon asked.

“Right now? We don’t have a presentation ready.”

“Let’s just do it verbally.”

“Uh... Just a moment please.”

“And there’s something I want to tell you just in case you’re worried,” Young-Joon said, “I don’t have any feelings about you. All I want to do is do good research together. Since I was in this department, I know how talented you are.”

“...”

“But you will have to be more careful about research ethics when you’re working with me.”

“Alright,” said Kim Joo-Yeon after taking a deep breath. “Alright, Director Ryu, we’ll begin the briefing.”

“Sure.”

“The Anticancer Drug Research Department has four anticancer drugs right now.”

“And Iloa, the cash cow, will now retire because of Cellicure.”

“Yes.”

“Are you developing Iloa further?”

“No.”

“Good choice. Cellicure is no regular drug. It won’t be easy to top it.”

“Two of the three remaining drugs have good efficacy and no side effects, so they do not need to be developed further. However, Tagvix, our inhaled lung cancer treatment, is the problem,” Kim Joo-Yeon said.

“From what I remember, I think that was our main project when I was here about six months ago,” Young-Joon said.

“That;s right.”

“The problem then was that Tagvix kept causing immune reactions in the lungs because of its high immunogenicity.”

“That’s right. That hasn’t been resolved yet. We have been using A-Bio’s genetic scissors, Cas9, to get rid of the substance that causes immunogenicity, but we’ve failed.”

“Does it not work well?”

“We believe the problem is our proficiency. We’re not familiar with Cas9.”

“Then I will support you with A-Bio’s Cas9 technicians. You can co-develop it with them,” Young-Joon said.

Kim Joo-Yeon nodded. This was something she predicted. Things would become much simpler if scientists who were in charge of Cas9 at A-Bio would come and help.

“And the other two anticancer drugs are treatments for malignant lymphoma and kidney cancer, right? Clutinib and Alimap?”

“That’s right.”

“Those two need to be developed further.”

“Develop them more?”

Kim Joo-Yeon was confused.

“But sir, the clinical trials for them have already been completed, they are effective, and they have no side effects. Why do...”

“Because it is expensive.”

“Expensive...?”

“Cancer patients pay over a hundred million won for these treatments. It’s burdensome, even if it is insured, to the patient and the country.”

“...”

“But there is a way to solve the problem about the price of the drug. Not just Clutinib or Alimap, but all biosimilar medicine.”

“What...?”

“There are two reasons why I took this position as director of Lab One. The first is that I can get a lot of talented scientists like all of you. And the other is...” Young-Joon said. “because the Plant-based Pharmaceuticals Research Department is here. It is a unique department that only exists at A-Gen in Korea, and one of a few in the world. We’ll use that department and significantly lower the cost of biosimilar drugs.”

“The plant team?”

“Yes. We should be able to lower it to at least one thousandth of the original price or one hundred thousandth at most. As long as we plan a good strategy.”

“What?!”

The scientists were filled with shock. Kim Joo-Yeon was especially shocked. There were instances when companies, like Roche, would purposely set new drugs at a high price so that they could profit. But Clutinib and Alimap weren’t drugs like that; the reason why they were expensive was because the manufacturing cost was high. And that manufacturing process was the fruit that modern science had optimized. But he could reduce it to below one thousandth of the regular price?

“What... What are you going to do?”

‘He probably said these crazy things at A-Bio every day, right? And he probably succeeded in doing all of them, right?’

Kim Joo-Yeon’s hands were sweating.

Young-Joon said, “The reason why anticancer drugs, along with vaccines and biopharmaceuticals are expensive is because we have to grow animal cells in order to produce it. A lot of money is spent because the culture liquid is quite expensive. And if a culture facility is infected with bacteria or viruses, they will suffer tremendous damages.”

“...”

“I am going to put in a gene that synthesizes biodrugs in tobacco so that the drug is highly expressed in the leaves of the plant. If you grind one leaf into a blender and make it into a juice, you will get enough for ten patients. The ultimate goal is to ensure that the cost of treatment per person doesn’t differ much from the price of vegetables at the supermarket.”

“What does... That makes no sense. The expression level of a foreign gene won’t be that high.”

Hwang Chan-Mi refuted.

“That is true if you put the gene inside the plant cell’s genome,” Young-Joon said. “I’m thinking of putting in the chloroplasts of the plant cell. One plant cell has more than two hundred chloroplasts.”