Chapter 64: The First Product (5)

A lot of scientists at A-Bio took turns having interviews with Jessie. Because Young-Joon volunteered to be the very last, she met with Carpentier’s spine regeneration team, Cheon Ji-Myung’s organoid team, and Choi Myung-Joon’s type-2 diabetes team.

“Spinal regeneration still has a long way to go. We did see results in mice experiments, but the experimental group was small. Also, we have to do monkey experiments due to the nature of the research to finish pre-clinical experiments,” Carpentier said.

“The small intestine organoid has a lot of room for future applications in the research and treatment of various diseases, including Crohn’s disease. Oh, we spent nights making progress because we were motivated as well. We were like, “Finally! It’s done! Boom! Organoids!”... but now, our CEO wants to do livers as well. If you can, can you add a job posting at the end of this interview? Our team is dying right now,” Cheon Ji-Myung said.

“All of this success was created from our CEO’s critical insight and brilliant ideas. All we did was strictly follow the basic strategy he designed and control various factors and conditions. Similar to how you can be the first in your class if you study by the book, we developed Amuc following the direction of our CEO...” Choi Myung-Joon said.

“I heard that you developed this in collaboration with Celligener. Could I meet someone from Celligener?” Jessie asked.

“I think you’ll have to go to Celligener for that. They don’t work here.”

Celligener: it was a venture company that became pretty famous at the IUBMB. Jessie had heard that they were doing a collaborative project with A-Bio.

“Thank you. I’ll head there.”

“But the key scientist who does probiotics probably isn’t there. They’re in India.”

“India?”

“Yes. They secured a good investor at the IUBMB, and it’s some wealthy man from India. So, the CEO of Celligener and that scientist went to India to get some funding.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you going to go to Celligener? I think I’m going to have to think about it if neither the CEO or the key scientist is there. I’ll go see the clinical trial scientists first.”

* * *

Jessie went to A-Gen. She visited the Stem Cells Department and the Clinical Trial Management Center that conducted the glaucoma trial and interviewed the people responsible. She also met Sung Yo-Han, the primary doctor from Sunyoo Hospital who was in charge of the clinical trial.

“Why did you move to A-Bio?” Jessie asked during the interview.

Actually, the reason Sung Yo-Han moved hospitals was because he heard that Sunyoo Hospital had a conflict with Professor Koh In-Guk and Young-Joon over the Alzheimer’s clinical trial. There were quite a lot of doctors who were disappointed in the hospital because of that, and a few doctors left as Koh In-Guk, who was very respected in the hospital, moved to A-Bio.

“I wanted to come work here from the moment I heard that it was being built,” Sung Yo-Han said. “But I had to finish the clinical trial I was doing at Sunyoo Hospital, so I finished it and came here.”

“Sunyoo Hospital must miss you. Patients will come to see you, the primary doctor of the clinical trial, and now they will go to A-Bio, not Sunyoo.”

“It doesn’t matter what hospital patients get treated at. As long as they get better.”

“You are right,” Jessie replied.

She was almost done with her interview.

After finishing it, she came back to A-Bio and met Young-Joon.

“It’s been a while, Doctor Ryu!” Jessie greeted Young-Joon brightly.

“Nice to see you.”

“How have you been? A-Bio has been giving us papers like carpet bombing.”

“It’s all thanks to our scientists who work hard on their experiments.”

Jessie did a short interview with Young-Joon. It was about how the next-generation hospital was going to be run, which research had the fastest progress and things like that.

“You have been providing your glaucoma treatment kit to the entire world. Have you heard anything about where it is being used?”

“I imagine I’ll be hearing things soon, but I haven’t heard anything yet either. But I heard that Schumatix India, a hospital that Schumatix sponsors, is remodeling into a next-generation hospital and providing glaucoma treatment.”

“Really?” Jessie said.

“Yes.”

“Wow. We’ll be hearing good news soon.”

Young-Joon just smiled quietly as he watched Jessie exclaim in joy. After about thirty more minutes, Jessie got up from her seat.

“I had a great time today. I will call you again.”

“Jessie.”

Young-Joon called her.

“Yes?”

“When are you going back?”

“Since I came here already, I took a couple days off to have some fun and get some rest. I will leave in about a week.”

“I see. Then you might hear some important news during your stay.”

“Important news?”

Jessie’s eyes shone.

“Yes. There’s something I heard about, and I think it’s going to come out in a few days.

* * *

What kind of news was this that the person who had mastered all kinds of new technologies would call it important? Jessie was prepared to cancel her flight to see that. And what Young-Joon said turned out to be right.

It was around eight in the evening when Jessie was having a late dinner at a Korean restaurant after Jessie visited a bunch of places. As she was scrolling through her social media on her phone from boredom, she saw a news article pop up.

[Breaking news: Eye cancer found in a patient in Navi Mumbai, India, who was being treated for glaucoma.]

“What...?”

Jessie’s eyes widened. She only recognized a few words with her Korean, which she had learned a little bit of after her first interview with Young-Joon, but she understood what it was right away. She quickly searched on the internet, then called Samuel right away.

—Jessie. Isn’t it too early in the morning to call? I thought it was my alarm.

“Samuel! Look at the news right now! Is it airing there, too?”

—What news?

“A patient in India who was treated for glaucoma with A-Bio’s product has eye cancer!”

—What?!

“Schumatix is announcing it right now.”

—What the... I’ll go look at it right now.

“

Nature

will write this as their headline. If there is a problem with the glaucoma treatment, it could damage us because we published the paper.”

—Alright, calm down. First, I have to see Schumatix announce this. I’ll watch it and then get back to you.

After hanging up, Samuel turned on his computer right away. Luca Taylor, the CEO of Schumatix, was doing a press conference.

“We are sponsoring an Indian hospital, Schumatix India, as part of our international medicine charity. India Schumatix recently purchased A-Bio’s glaucoma treatment kit, and it was used by the hospital’s scientists and doctors to treat patients. Most of them are improving, but we have discovered that one patient has developed eye cancer.”

“Who are you referring to when you say the hospital’s scientists?” asked the reporter.

“We got volunteers from the stem cell experts at Schumatix and sent them to A-Bio. They learned stem cell dedifferentiation technology from CEO Ryu Young-Joon himself and worked on optic nerve differentiation at India Schumatix.”

“Are you saying that there were scientists who could do optic nerve differentiation at the hospital?”

“That’s right. We were inspired by A-Bio’s growth and decided to quickly follow their pace. We set up dedifferentiation facilities for stem cells and provided technicians to India Schumatix in order to make it into the second next-generation hospital in the world.”

“Is there a possibility that the reason a patient developed eye cancer was not because of the optic nerves, but the doctor’s mistake?”

“It cannot be. We were trying to grow this hospital out of humanitarian and welfare purposes. We recruited Professor Martin, the best eye doctor expert in the world, all the way from France. Additionally, the entire treatment process was recorded by the security camera in the operating room, and there were no problems in the procedure,” Luca Taylor said. “And even if you make a mistake in the procedure, a tumor doesn’t suddenly begin growing unless you shoot the patient with radiation or something. There were no other factors that could have caused cancer.”

“How is the patient?”

“We are preparing for surgery, but we are in a predicament as it is very difficult to remove it due to the nature of the tumor.”

“Are you sure that it is a tumor?”

“We are sure,” Luca Taylor said.

He was a businessman now, but he was once one of the best scientists in the world. Luca Taylor was careful about what he was doing. The most certain way to determine that it was a tumor was to take it out with surgery and analyze it. But the evidence would be tampered with in that case, as the tumor had to be revealed to the world while it was in the patient’s eye.

Then, what was an indirect way to determine it? They could observe how the tumor changed. If it was just the aggregation of normal cells, it would disappear in about three days. But the tumor was growing even after five days.

“The tumor is growing continuously. It is unfortunate, but India Schumatix Hospital does not have the facilities to remove the patient’s tumor. As such, we are going to transfer them to another country to treat them because the longer it takes, the worse it is for the patient. We are going to be as fast as possible,” Luca Taylor said.

“There were no patients who developed tumors during the clinical trials, so why did one occur here?” asked one of the reporters.

“Most of the people who participated in the clinical trial were Korean, right? I believe that a difference in genetic background could have caused this. Whatever it is, what’s clear is that the safety of this technology hasn’t been proven enough to be distributed to the world,” Luca Taylor said. “It is the first-ever stem cell therapy, and it is a technology that uses stem cells, a type of cell that is not that different from cancer cells. We need to be a lot more careful with this than other drugs.”

As the reporters were writing down what Luca Taylor was saying for their article...

Ring!

One of the reporter’s phones rang. When they took it out and read the message, they were shocked.

“Ryu Young-Joon, the CEO of A-Bio, is going to have a press conference in Korea right now.”

“A press conference?”

They were doing a press conference here right now, and Young-Joon was fighting back right away? He reacted so fast it was as if he was waiting for it. The reporters murmured.

Luca Taylor, who had become pretty sharp and quick from being a businessman for a long time, sensed danger.

‘Something’s wrong.’

* * *

“Right now, Schumatix is making an issue about the safety of A-Bio’s glaucoma treatment kit. They said that a tumor occurred in the eye of a patient who was treated with the kit,” Young-Joon said in front of the reporters. Jessie wasn’t a reporter, but she was also here.

Flash! Click!

The reporters continuously took photos and wrote notes.

“But that is not a tumor,” Young-Joon said firmly. “That is the result of the activation of the safety mechanism included in the stem cell treatment kit.”

“Safety mechanism?”

The reporters began talking amongst themselves

“When you use the first kit, the virus attaches a gene called TP54, a self-destruction gene, on the end of a gene called LOX3. Because the cells that haven’t been differentiated into optic nerves keep expressing LOX3, TP54 also gets expressed, resulting in self-destruction after a period of time,” Young-Joon said. “This process becomes suppressed by the virus in the second kit. As the cells differentiate into optic nerves and LOX3 gets suppressed, TP54 is no longer expressed. This algorithm triggers self-destruction in the stem cell state, but does not when they become optic nerves. The reason why we made this system was because we were worried that a miniscule amount of stem cells could remain during the treatment process and cause side effects. It is a type of safety mechanism. As such, our stem cells do not cause cancer even if they go into the affected area.”

Clack clack clack!

The reporters’ typing noises filled the room. The reporters could not follow Young-Joon’s explanation right away, but Jessie, who was a former scientist, could understand what he was saying right away. It was truly shocking.

Countless scientists had been working hard to make nerves out of stem cells and treat patients with them. The reason that glaucoma was an incurable disease was because they couldn’t do that.

But not only did Young-Joon conquer that step, but he went beyond that. Now, he had eliminated the side effect, which occurred in extremely low probabilities.

‘How can this work?’

Jessie felt euphoric as if she was engulfed in religion or something. When everyone was praising Young-Joon that the technology was an innovative advancement, he wasn’t satisfied and devoted himself to research, taking the next step.

—Not advancing doesn’t mean stagnation, but regress.

Jessie remembered what he said during his last interview. She got goosebumps thinking about what he said.

Young-Joon said, “Then what is the tumor in the patient’s eye? If only a small amount of stem cells remain in the patient’s eye, the destruction process cannot be monitored because they are too small. But if a large amount is administered, the stem cells create a clump of cells due to aggregation after time. From the outside, it looks like a tumor. The thing that Luca Taylor determined to be cancer was that.”

Young-Joon did not refer to Luca Taylor as the CEO of Schumatix, nor did he respectfully address him by doctor as a fellow scientist. He just called him by his name, Luca Taylor. Some of the reporters picked up on Young-Joon’s slightly aggressive tone. They could sense that something bigger was going to come out.

“I actually want to think that it was because Schumatix is just extremely lacking. I want to believe that even though the scientists there received training from A-Bio and the experiment spoon-fed to them, they were just unable to do it because they lacked the skills,” Young-Joon said. “But that was not the case. A few days ago, a report from the CIA that was given to the President of the United States was shared with me.”

Young-Joon picked up a file with a document in it.

“In here, there is suspicion that Luca Taylor himself ordered the hospital to administer stem cells directly into the patient’s eye, not optic nerves. He was trying to purposely cause cancer in the patient’s eye.”

“Ah...”

“Woah...”

Brief sighs and shock spread among the reporters. They became extremely confused in seconds. Amidst the murmuring noise, Young-Joon spoke.

“We will have to thoroughly investigate what dirty tricks and purposes they did this with.”

“Doctor Ryu! Is everything you said true?” shouted one of the reporters.

“If there is even an inch of lies in what I said right now, I will resign from my position as CEO of A-Bio.”

Young-Joon made another power move. The reporters, who were shocked again, didn’t stop pressing their cameras.

Young-Joon said, “The safety mechanism is not a regular cell destruction mechanism, but an artificial mechanism by TP54. This process is about two weeks slower than regular cell destruction due to aggregation, but it is much safer as it disappears slower.”

“...”

“Two weeks. Watch. The thing that Luca Taylor said was a tumor will disappear. Please watch that it is impossible for those despicable people who deceive medicine to purposely cause cancer, and that the true power of science is far superior to their wickedness.”

* * *

At Schuamtix’s press conference...

“Ryu Young-Joon of A-Bio is claiming that it is the aggregation of stem cells!” shouted the reporters.

“We are getting reports of the press conference from the breaking news in Korea. In the United States, the White House Press Secretary has announced and confirmed the same.”

“Sir. Did you really directly inject stem cells into a patient’s eye and induce cancer?”

The reporters’ questions became hostile. Luca Taylor’s hands were wet with sweat.

“How... could we have done such a thing... I do not know anything about that. I was told that it was a tumor, and all I’ve done is report it.”