Chapter 6: Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (1)

“Roche, Pfizer, Conson & Colson...”

Young-Joon, who was writing his two weeks' notice, stopped and took his hands off the keyboard.

‘Wait. Are they actually better than A-Gen?’

He started to remember all the bad stories he heard about them.

According to The Independence’s reveal on November 14th, 2011, Pfizer and several other transnational pharmaceutical companies began a large-scale clinical trial in India after restrictions regarding clinical trials were eased in 2005.

Young-Joon didn’t know just how recklessly they did it, but 1730 people died in three years. Of course, the subjects in the clinical trial were poor people, but there was something worse than that: there were minors in the study as well. There were kids who didn’t even know how to read yet.

The compensation that people received for each deceased individual was 5.4 million won. Even though Independence exposed them, the pharmaceutical companies were not punished at all; they actually sued Independence instead.

“...”

What about Roche? Five thousand AIDS patients in South Korea have been protesting against Roche over the past few years. It was because they did not sell Fuzeon, a cure for AIDS, in Korea because the determined price was too low. Even though the average income in the United States was twice the average income in Korea, Roche demanded the cure be sold at the same price.

Also, it wasn’t like Roche would suffer a loss if they lowered the price, as the manufacturing price was a hundredth of what they sold it for. Roche explained that the surcharge was because they needed funding for research, but Young-Joon didn’t really buy it. It wasn’t that convincing considering that they brought in billions in profits every year just with Fuzeon.

The profits of transnational pharmaceutical companies were incomparably higher compared to any other industry: finance, manufacturing, and even IT. There were only ten pharmaceutical companies included in the Fortune 500, but their profits surpassed the rest of the other companies’ profits combined.

In a way, this was natural. They held the lives of people in their hands and had a monopoly on their drugs; no one could say anything, even when they charged a hundred times more than the manufacturing price.

Because of that, a fair number of AIDS patients in Korea died, lost their vision, or became paralyzed. At least Korea was able to protest because they were a developed country. Some lucky patients were able to receive a small amount of Fuzeon from international relief organizations as well.

Africa, on the other hand, was a living hell. It was impossible for patients in Africa to buy treatment for AIDS, which was as expensive as their weekly living expenses. Because of that, they were using a replica drug that was secretly manufactured in India. Of course, a lot of African people died as the quality of the replica drug hadn’t been verified.

𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

In the midst of all this, many pharmaceutical companies, led by Roche, fiercely protested against the African and Indian governments about the issue, and they even had legal disputes over it. They did all this while recklessly conducting human experiments in India.

Moreover, these pharmaceutical companies concealed any negative results and data about their new drugs. They did this with a well-known flu medicine as well; this was basically a secret that everyone in the industry knew about.

Would companies really want to develop amazing drugs in turn for fifteen years of their frontline scientists’ lives? Or would it be better for them to lobby the government officials who were in charge of the FDA approval? In this case, it was easy for mediocre new drugs, created by hiding data about side effects, to be approved for the market.

Why were several countries in the Americas, including the United States, so ridden with substance abuse? People who thought that it was because poor black people or immigrants sold drugs were still naive about the pharmaceutical industry. Books that exposed transnational pharmaceutical companies as the bad guys were on every bookshelf in every bookstore. A-Gen was actually one of the better companies. Or so Young-Joon thought since he saw what they did with the new liver cancer treatment.

“

Sigh

...” Young-Joon covered his face with his hands. He didn’t like any of them.

‘What if I start my own company?’

Young-Joon was confident that he would not be swayed by A-Gen. However, he would probably waste at least five years, as registering and setting up a new lab was quite a picky process. It wasn’t easy to get approval from the government because they would be handling dangerous substances, and there was a chance of leakage.

“...”

‘Let’s change the plan.’

There were no good pharmaceutical companies. Since they were all corrupt, he had to do it himself. However, it would take too long to build a start-up or a small company.

Click.

Young-Joon deleted his two-week notice from his computer.

‘Let’s go back to A-Gen.’

Young-Joon was going to take advantage of the strong network A-Gen had already built and grow from there. He was going to give them amazing results, show them his potential, and launch an affiliate company. He could just build that company, but he could also go further.

‘Couldn’t I actually absorb A-Gen?’

It wasn’t completely impossible. 7-Eleven had its headquarters in the United States, but the branch in Japan took over the headquarters, did they not?

The amount of power Rosaline held in the research field was close to infinite. How sad would it be if all he did with his power was build a mediocre company and sell a few drugs? This power wasn’t just going to end with curing things like cancer or AIDS; it was a scalpel that was going to remove the vile and materialistic politics that had infected the entire pharmaceutical industry. It was a guillotine that would behead fake scientists like Kim Hyun-Taek.

* * *

Senior Scientist Park Dong-Hyun of the Life Creation Department was looking at the experimental data. He was used to being grilled by his superiors during the weekly project meeting. However, there was a far worse problem than that next week: the annual report seminar. It was a huge research meeting all the scientists at A-Gen participated, except for the interns. Here, each project manager had to report their performance and discuss the results. It was a hellish discussion that took eight hours, and the atmosphere always turned hostile when it was the Life Creation Department’s turn to present. Everyone ignored them or looked at them with a condescending look, and some of the lab directors even cursed at them. The worst thing they heard last year was, “Look at what you’ve done right now. You could teach a monkey to do that!”

‘Seriously, how could a monkey conduct an experiment?’

They said things like that because all they came to do was break the Life Creation Department’s spirits instead of giving actual feedback and discussion about their study. Of course, that was because the goal of lab directors was not to hear the Life Creation Department’s presentation but to make them quit.

“Phew...”

Park Dong-Hyun was frustrated that he had to go through that hell again.

“Hello, I’m here.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Young-Joon greeted everyone and sat in his seat.

“Are you feeling better?” Park Dong-Hyun approached him and asked.

“Yes, they didn’t find any abnormalities.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Yes. Senior Park, our year-end seminar is soon, right? I think we should evaluate our current progress and discuss which result we should present.”

“Alright, follow me.”

Park Dong-Hyun and Young-Joon went to the conference room together. As Young-Joon made him a coffee and waited for a bit, two members of the Life Creation Department walked in. There were now four of them, including Young-Joon and Park Dong-Hyun.

“Well, everyone knows Doctor Ryu Young-Joon, right? He’s the new one. The one that cursed at Kim Hyun-Taek. Please welcome him,” Park Dong-Hyun introduced Young-Joon to his colleagues.

“Are you feeling better?” the woman with round glasses asked. It was the woman who called the ambulance when Young-Joon collapsed.

“Yes, I’m fine now.”

“Take care of yourself. I’m Jung Hae-Rim, and I’m a senior scientist. I was in the Protein Purification Research Department, but I was transferred here after some incidents. Welcome.”

After introducing herself, Jung Hae-Rim glanced at the man sitting next to her. He was quite chubby, and it was a little embarrassing because he was wearing a tight shirt that showed all the lines on his body. He had messy hair, wore square-frame glasses, and had an innocent-looking face. He was extremely focused on a Japanese animation playing on his phone.

“Koh Soon-Yeol, we’re going to have our meeting right now. You should introduce yourself since we have someone new,” Jung Hae-Rim said.

Then, without even glancing at her, Koo Soon-Yeol said, “There’s still a minute left until lunch is over.”

It was two o’clock.

‘Lunch?’

As Young-Joon looked puzzled, Jung Hae-Rim said, “Soon-Yeol went out for lunch a little after one o’clock. Haha... You can tell why Soon-Yeol is here, right?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Companies don't like people who clock out at the minute.”

Young-Joon nodded.

“Apparently, he came here after confronting the executive manager about why he wasn’t allowed to leave when his shift ended at 6 pm,” Jung Hae-Rim said and shook her head.

“Is your name Koh Soon-Yeol?” Young-Joon asked the portly man.

“Yes, it is. Soon-Yeol, can you please introduce your—”

“Ack!”

Koh Soon-Yeol suddenly began ripping his hair out. He hugged his phone.

“Sonogo Kohaku

dame-yo

!”[1]

“Pardon?”

“Kohaku-chan is...

Sonna hazu wa nai

...”[2]

Jung Hae-Rim poked his shoulder, but Koh Soon-Yeol was already turning off his phone. He was like a robot who started working right at the hour.

“My name is Koh Soon-Yeol. Nice to meet you~”

“Are you Japanese?” Young-Joon asked.

“I am Korean-Japanese. But I’m currently a Korean citizen. I don’t think I really need to introduce myself. Kek. Hae-Rim-chan already introduced everything about me, right~?”

‘Woah, is this guy for real?’

Young-Joon could clearly tell what kind of guy he was even without an explanation. He felt like he could guess what picture he had on his pillow cover.

Jung Hae-Rim looked at Koh Soon-Yeol like she had given up. She said to Park Dong-Hyun, “Then let’s begin, Leader Park.”

“I’m not the team leader; we have our Executive Manager Cheon.”

“But he’s in Cheonan right now. And I don’t think he’ll come back... You know what he was assigned this time, right?”

Park Dong-Hyun looked stumped as Jung Hae-Rim spoke. He explained to Young-Joon, “Actually, there are two more people on our team. There’s Principal Scientist Cheon Ji-Myung, our team leader, and Lead Scientist, Bae Sun-Mi.”

“Are neither of them here today?” Young-Joon asked.

“You will see them sometime. You don’t have to remember their names for now. I’ll introduce them again once they’re here.”

Park Dong-Hyun opened the presentation file on his laptop.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting. As you all know, we are the Life Creation Department, and our goal is to create a living artificial cell out of chemicals,” Park Dong-Hyun explained. “And ultimately, we are thinking of using this to create artificial organs that will not be rejected by the patient’s immune system and using it in transplants.”

The creation and transplantation of artificial organs: it was one of the major issues of future medicine. Non-functional organs could be swapped out for functional ones, like swapping out a faulty or broken part in a car. Even if one was diagnosed with lung cancer from smoking three packs a day...

‘Don’t worry. We have a healthy pair of lungs right here!’

...They would be fine after receiving a transplant for a new set of lungs.

In current medicine, there had to be an organ donor in order to do a transplant. For example, patients with renal failure struggled on artificial dialysis to survive until there was a kidney donor. However, it would become a lot easier if an organ could be created as all they had to do was make it and put it inside.

Another obstacle an artificial organ could overcome was rejection. In 1936, a person named Voronoy in Russia performed the first kidney transplant. Then, the recipient died, and the cause was rejection. The recipient’s immune system attacked the transplanted kidney, causing an infection, and eventually killing the patient.

Why was that? It was because the genetic material of the donor and recipient was slightly different. It was like someone wearing the wrong size glove and having it fall off while they were working. It meant that the recipient and the donor needed to have similar genes in order for the organ to work properly. Ultimately, even if there was a donor, a person with renal failure would die if the donor’s genes weren’t similar enough.

This problem could also be solved if artificial organs were invented, as they just needed to use the same genetic material when making it.

“But do we have to start with an artificial cell?” Young-Joon criticized.

“Then?”

“We can use embryonic stem cells.”

“That’s right. We do have something like embryonic stem cells, and it’s also easier. However, those stem cells have a limit to how commercialized they can be.”

Young-Joon nodded as he understood.

Simply put, embryonic cells were made by injecting the patient’s genetic material into an embryo created from a sperm and egg. Embryos had the ability to differentiate into any kind of cell. As such, these stem cells could differentiate into whatever tissue the patient wanted, such as the liver.

There also wouldn’t be any rejection from the patient as it was basically injecting their own genetic material into their bodies. If so, wouldn’t people just have to make embryonic stem cells from the patient’s genetic material, create a liver with that, and then transplant it into the patient? It would be the end of traditional transplants if that could happen.

However, the technology wasn’t advancing even though it had been a while since this concept was proposed. The reason was that the one thing they absolutely needed for this was an embryo. What this meant was that in order to treat a patient with renal failure with stem cells, the doctor had to go through a number of steps.

Inject hormones into a healthy female volunteer for approximately two weeks to induce ovulation, check them with an ultrasound, and then harvest the eggs from their ovaries with a syringe.

Collect sperm from a healthy male volunteer.

Use an ICSI, an IntraCellular Sperm Injector, to fertilize the egg into an embryo.

Remove all genetic material from the embryo.

Obtain somatic cells from the patient to obtain their genetic material.

Insert the embryo with the patient’s genetic material.

Transplant into the patient after growing it into a liver or as a cell.

The doctor would have to do it all over again if even one step failed. This process was just incredibly difficult.

Let’s say a doctor and a highly-trained technician who was extremely skilled successfully created a liver.

‘Congratulations. You cured one patient.’

There were hundreds of thousands of similar patients waiting in line. They would have to start from step one to treat the next patient.

It was completely different from stamping out cold medicine from factories. Who would be able to do such a crazy thing like that? Because of these obstacles, this treatment method was still deemed scientific fiction.

Let’s just say that somehow, the doctors and scientists were willing to go through that hell for each patient until everyone was cured. It would be for nothing if they didn’t have a woman who would keep taking hormones for others and offer her eggs like Mother Teresa.

‘Huh...?’

A message suddenly popped up in front of Young-Joon’s eyes as he was lost in thought.

[Synchronization Mode: Would you like to gain insight into how to revert a normal cell into an embryonic stem cell? Fitness consumption: 2.0]

This time, it didn’t take fitness by the second, but it consumed 2.0 at once. However, the merit of gaining knowledge like that was incredible.

‘Reverting normal cells into embryonic stem cells...’

If that was possible, they wouldn’t have to go through the seven-step process; all they would have to do is swab the inside of a patient’s mouth, modify it, and then plant it into the patient’s body.

“Would there be a way to revert a normal cell into an embryonic cell?” Young-Joon asked.

“A normal cell?” Park Dong-Hyun said.

“Yes.”

“You mean like skin cells or blood cells?”

“Yes.”

Park Dong-Hyun chuckled.

“If that was possible... It would be revolutionary.”

“If we were able to make an embryonic stem cell from a normal cell, can we present that at the year-end seminar? It’s a little different from our current project, though.”

“Of course that’s okay. It’s not like it’s completely different. Why? Did you hear something?” Jung Hae-Rim interrupted and asked.

“No... Nothing like that.” As Young-Joon pretended like it was nothing, Park Dong-Hyun smiled.

“Young-Joon, if that happened, the Nobel Prize committee would come and beg us to take the Nobel Prize in Medicine.”

1.

Dame

is Japanese for ‘That’s no good!’ ?

2.

Sonna hazu wa nai

is Japanese for ‘That can’t be...’ ?