Chapter 132: The American Cancer Conference (8)

“It grew...” said one of the scientists in the audience. They began whispering again.

“It is definitely bigger than before.”

“Can tumor growth be observed like this?”

“It usually takes a few days for it to grow like this.”

“The only reason for a tumor to grow that fast is hyperprogression...”

“My god...”

“How could you do an experiment like this? How is this technology possible?”

Young-Joon silently watched the commotion spread.

“Doctor Ryu!” someone shouted. “How did you do that experiment with the organoid and tumor? I read in your paper that A-Bio developed a small intestine organoid, but... This experiment is too shocking. Please explain how you did it.”

“Of course.”

Young-Joon picked up the microphone.

“The relinquishing of patent rights and the free distribution of target genes, which are intellectual property, that I mentioned earlier is only possible because the U.S. government has also relinquished all rights and fully supports us. I would like to give a very special thanks to them. And...” Young-Joon said. “This experiment you are seeing right now, the miracle of being able to observe hyperprogression in real-time, is only possible because of the outstanding scientists from our lab.”

Then, Young-Joon looked at the Life Creation Team members who were sitting in the front.

‘No...’

Park Dong-Hyun flinched.

“Principal Scientist Cheon and our members, please come up here for a moment?”

“Eek...”

Bae Sun-Mi was flustered.

“H-hey guys, you go up there.”

The scientists in the audience were all professors at the world’s most prestigious universities or key scientists at big pharmaceutical companies. And if she went up there, she would have to lecture them about organoids and artificial tumors.

“Why are you scared, Lead Bae?” said Cheon Ji-Myung as he stood up. “This is nothing compared to being grilled at Lab Six every year.”

The members walked onto the stage with elated faces. Young-Joon put down the microphone and spoke to them in a low voice.

“I won’t bother you too much, so don’t worry.”

“Please give us a warning when you do this kind of thing, sir,” Park Dong-Hyun said playfully.

Young-Joon picked up the microphone again and introduced the Life Creation Team.

“They are the key scientists who have done many important experiments at our lab, including the development of organoids. From the left, Principal Scientist Cheon Ji-Myung, Lead Scientist Bae Sun-Mi...”

Clap clap clap!

After a round of applause and cheers, Young-Joon began his lecture on the process of making organoids and introducing an artificial tumor. He asked the Life Creation Team questions during the lecture.

“...”

For some reason, Jung Hae-Rim felt a little choked up. Young-Joon could have answered everything himself, but the reason why he brought up the Life Creation Team was out of respect for the frontline scientists. He wanted to recognize and praise their efforts by giving them the spotlight.

—The scientists who conducted the experiments should get the most honor.

That was one of the basic principles of the scientific community. That was why the first author was given to the person who did the experiments and wrote the paper. However, it was something that people tended to overlook, especially companies.

‘He really is a great person...’

Jung Hae-Rim glanced at Young-Joon. He started from the bottom and worked his way up to that position at an incredible speed. He had the White House in the palm of his hand, and he was famous enough to destroy a huge company like Schumatix.

And yet, Young-Joon still had the same attitude toward frontline scientists as before.

* * *

After the presentation ended, the incubator came out of the lecture room and was placed in front of the conference information center. It was placed right next to the reception desk that people saw when they walked in through the main entrance to the conference. The live cell imager and a monitor that showed an enlarged image of the tumor were also set up right next to it.

“Why are they putting it here...?” one of the receptionists, who helped people sign up for lectures, whispered to her supervisor.

“Because it’s the most accessible and there’s a lot of people coming and going.”

“It’s a lot of pressure.”

“There’s nothing we can do.”

Now, there were many more people coming to see the tumor than people asking to register for lectures. A constant stream of scientists, journalists, and people were crowding the incubator, taking photos and looking at it. They were making a huge fuss over it.

It didn’t end with just one look.

“Look at this. I took this photo before the lecture started, but look at it now. It’s almost 1.5 times bigger.”

“I took a picture of the live cell imager video that was on the screen when Doctor Ryu was giving his lecture at nine o’clock, right? I think it’s gotten three times bigger.”

The scientists whispered among each other with their phone gallery open. They kept coming back in regular time intervals to take pictures and make observations. The peak was around lunchtime. There were so many people coming in that the reception desk was paralyzed. Everyone was curious to see if the size of the tumor would be noticeably different before and after lunch. Because of that, it was incredibly busy after lunch as well. It was a clear indication of how much people were interested in this show that would last in the history of biology.

By two o’clock in the afternoon, everything became clear.

“The tumor is as big as the organoid now,” the scientists said in admiration.

“Can the tumor grow this fast if it’s not hyperprogression?”

“Excuse us for a moment.”

The Life Creation Team and Young-Joon appeared through the scientists. Park Dong-Hyun and Koh Soon-Yeol were pushing a cart with something on it. It was another monitor.

“You can leave it here. You can give it to me now,” said the video program expert who came with them.

They set up the monitor familiarly and then connected it to the live cell imager. Inside the machine was a five-hour video of the microscope, recorded from nine in the morning to two o’clock in the afternoon. They loaded the video and played it on the second monitor at sixty-four times speed. The five-hour video was compressed to about four minutes. The growth of the tumor was even more obvious like this. Four more minutes were added into the video after it played once.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. Please call me if you have any questions. I’ll be back in my lab, Room 303, in the diagnostic imaging lab.”

“Yes, thank you.”

As Young-Joon was about to leave, the room suddenly fell silent. Jamie Anderson and Oliver were here. People began to slowly back away, creating a path in the middle. Jamie Anderson slowly walked towards the incubator. He looked down at the enormous tumor with a complicated expression.

“...”

A heavy silence filled the room. Young-Joon stared at him, then approached him.

“Doctor Anderson.”

“...”

“I am upset that I had to attack important research from the Cold Spring Laboratory this way, but there is no value in science that trumps the truth.”

“...”

“The incubation will run until this evening, and everything will be cleaned up later on. The data will be sent to

Science

.”

“...”

Jamie Anderson clenched his teeth. Oliver, who was standing beside him, let out a sigh. Oliver was the true developer of the immune checkpoint inhibitor. He was the first author of the paper as well. All Anderson did was fund the project; Oliver was the one who actually ran the experiments. The technology, which was like his child, was being dismantled before his eyes.

“Doctor Ryu,” Oliver said in a voice with mixed feelings.

“Yes.”

“... Thank you for reporting the important problem with this technology.”

“...”

“Thanks to you, we were able to prevent more accidents. Thank you.”

Oliver thanked Young-Joon.

* * *

In the Oval Office at the White House, James Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, was having a conversation with President Campbell.

“He is amazing,” Campbell said.

“But it’s such a loss that... Why did you grant a request like that? I honestly didn’t expect it,” James said.

“Huh? You can’t say that to me, Director Holdren. You said that Doctor Ryu would conquer cancer with or without our help, didn’t you? You said to take the opportunity since it was just a matter of time,” Campbell said.

“That is true, but... Still, I didn’t think you would do it that willingly. To be honest, I am a little disappointed. I mean, look at how much money we’re pouring into Doctor Ryu. We’re giving him access to all the research resources the U.S. has built up over decades of cancer research and a whopping three billion dollars, right? But the fact that we are not gaining anything from that is...”

“Why aren’t we getting anything from it? All the papers that will come from there will have an acknowledgement of the funding from the National Institute of Health, right?”

“But that’s just for honor,” James said. “Mr. President, scientists like myself like honor and prestige. We would be thrilled if we worked hard in that cancer lab and published a paper in

Science

as the first author. Universities will hand you a job as a professor if you have a paper like that under your belt. It’s a powerful weapon for your career.”

“But since I don’t care about that and I’m investing a lot of money in Doctor Ryu, I should gain some tangible profit from him?”

“It’s not that capitalistic, but... It is true that the amount of money we’re pouring in is too much for us to just think of it as charity.”

Campbell smiled.

“You’re right. But we are the government, not a company.”

“...”

“Wasn’t it you who told me that the scientific world was shifting to Asia with Doctor Ryu’s performance in the past year?”

“That’s right, but...”

“Director, the United States has been the best in the world in businesses of the future, such as medicine, biotechnology, and biopharmaceuticals, by a large margin.”

“Yes.”

“And I think maintaining that is worth it.”

“Hm...”

Holdren scratched his head.

“The overwhelming support of three billion dollars is to keep Doctor Ryu on our side.”

“To keep him on our side...”

Has the U.S. government ever sacrificed this much in order to make one person into their ally?

“In my opinion, this isn’t even half of what Doctor Ryu is capable of. He mentioned cultured meat during our meeting before, right?” “That’s right...”

“What do you think? Am I wrong? I think that if we continue to support Doctor Ryu like we are doing now, the United States will be able to continue leading the world in science.”

“Well, probably. Doctor Ryu knows more about cancer than any other scientist in the twenty-first century.”

“Right?”

“Yes. Cellicure, a liver cancer cure, Birnagen for pancreatic cancer, and the genetic surgery that cured lung cancer this time around: all three have completely different drug bases.”

Cellicure was a traditional treatment using chemicals. Even though Song Ji-Hyun played a vital role in the development of Cellicure, Young-Joon must have given her a lot of help. As such, Young-Joon had most likely mastered organic chemistry.

However, the cure for pancreatic cancer was unexpectedly a virus; no chemicals were involved at all. He actually used the crazy idea of manipulating a virus that caused pancreatic necrosis in fish to destroy pancreatic tumors in humans.

𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

On top of that, when he cured lung cancer this time around, he combined a couple of new technologies and manipulated genes like he was doing surgery. It was neither chemotherapy nor virus-based treatment, but immunotherapy.

“Usually, it’s hard to do any of those three. He has mastered all kinds of scientific knowledge, he has an incredible imagination and reasoning skills, and he has strong execution skills to make it happen. If we can stay friendly with Doctor Ryu and run the A-Bio Cancer Laboratory, the United States will be able to stay where we are in biology right now.”

“That’s good enough. No one will complain that we are spending tax money on useless things because the United States has the most cancer patients in the world. Three billion dollars is not expensive if we can keep Doctor Ryu as an ally and give the American people pride and hope that we are conquering cancer,” Campbell said. “Actually, since it has come to this, I think we need to go one step further, Director Holdren.”

“A step further?”

“Isn’t the Swedish crown trying to claim Doctor Ryu by making him an honorary citizen and whatnot? I’m sure there are other countries that want him too, but technically, we are the first ones in line.”

“...”

“Right? We have supported Doctor Ryu since Schumatix. Why don’t we give him a little boost and solidify our relationship?”

“How?”

“Should we make him an honorary citizen, too?”

“...”

“I’m kidding. Let’s start with publicly affirming A-Bio’s patent guidelines that Doctor Ryu would have announced today.”