Chapter 67: The Conqueror of AIDS (1)

Ardip was being treated at Apollo Hospital in Chennai, the biggest hospital in India. They were preparing an important announcement today. The reporters who were called were all waiting in the hospital lobby from early in the morning. There were quite a lot of foreign reporters among them as well. They had an idea of the announcement the hospital was going to give today.

“We have confirmed that the stem cell aggregation has fully disappeared from the patient’s eye today,” said Hospital Director Vichas.

Everyone already predicted this ending when the aggregation shrunk to half its size, but it was a whole other thing to actually confirm that. This was like a declaration of the end of the war between Schumatix and A-Bio. Schumatix’s defeat was already marked, but it was now basically publicly determined.

[A-Bio’s glaucoma treatment kit is safe. Complete destruction of stem cells confirmed.]

[It does not cause tumors, and the invalid cells are naturally eliminated.]

[Even if a large amount of stem cells only treated with the first kit are put in the eye, they automatically disappear.]

[A-Bio’s glaucoma treatment kit does not create tumors.]

As news articles were being written as the announcement was coming out, Vichas gave them a new announcement.

“Additionally, we were contacted by A-Bio a week ago,” he said. “A-Bio has promised us that after the activity of the safety mechanism is finished and all the stem cells are destroyed from patient Ardip’s eye, they will treat his glaucoma for free.”

It was the first time this news was being released. The reporters’ eyes widened.

Clack clack clack!

The reporters began typing even faster.

“A-Bio has said that they will either send us a technician that can perform the stem cell dedifferentiation and optic nerve differentiation, or they will cover the cost of moving patient Ardip to Korea for treatment and returning him back to India.”

Flash! Click!

The reporters continuously pressed their cameras.

Vichas announced, “We have accepted A-Bio’s offer, and we are in the middle of discussing it with the patient, Ardip. He will go to Korea on the next flight available, and he has decided to be treated at A-Bio. Thank you.”

Headlines and news articles began pouring out. This decision of Young-Joon’s was quite impactful.

[Even in the midst of a controversy surrounding the new technology of automatic destruction of stem cells, A-Bio never took their eyes off the patient.]

Young-Joon read the leading article in the newspaper as he had breakfast. He didn’t even distribute press releases and make a big deal out of it before doing this, but this was what happened.

[A-Bio promises the treatment of the patient Ardip.]

[A-Bio’s CEO Ryu Young-Joon takes responsibility for the patient if they were treated by his glaucoma treatment kit, no matter the process.]

Because it wasn’t first announced by the company, it had a much more positive effect on the company’s image.

—The reason why A-Bio did not announce that they would be taking responsibility for that patient? It’s simple. It’s because that’s the obvious thing to do. When I was conducting the Alzheimer’s clinical trial, I met with Doctor Ryu Young-Joon often. He only had two things he was interested in.

Shin Jung-Ju said.

—What were they?

—How the trial was going and if I had any questions for him, the inventor.

—Questions?

—Yes. Doctor Ryu is a classic scientist. He tries to take responsibility for all the data and technology he has put out. If something that he didn’t predict happens, he thinks that he has to provide an answer for that no matter how trivial it may be.

—I see.

—To be honest, that’s the right thing to do. That’s the attitude a true scientist and inventor should have. I believe that is why Doctor Ryu is trying to finish the Indian patient’s treatment; it’s because that’s the obvious thing to do.

—You said it was the obvious thing to do. Are there a lot of people who don’t do that nowadays?

—Yes, a lot. I think that scientists in the pharmaceutical industry have lost their craftsmanship. If they get a report that something they developed does not work well, they do not answer.

—Do they just ignore it?

—Yes. Especially large pharmaceutical companies. They just trash data that says that something does not work. As a doctor, when I report the side effects of using the drugs they developed, there will be no answer, and the report of the side effects often does not get included in the pharmacological data they provide. They are deliberately disregarding it.

Shin Jung-Ju said with a hint of frustration in her voice.

—Sometimes, they won’t just do that during the data feedback phase after commercialization, but they will do that from the clinical trial phase. They just erase reports about the drug having no effects or having side effects. There are some products from large pharmaceutical companies that don’t have their clinical trial data fully disclosed, and that’s because they have erased the data that could be unfavorable to the effect of the product.

She continued.

—Ah… Are there a lot of drugs like that?

—A famous flu drug that we all know about is one of them as well. One time, doctors protested to the companies to reveal all of the data.

—Wow. This is shocking.

—Yes. It’s obvious, but pharmaceutical companies should not act like this. If there is feedback that there’s a problem with the product, or that it failed to treat something, the manufacturer should solve that problem and take responsibility for it. Look at A-Bio right now. This was manipulated by Schumatix from the beginning, but they are taking responsibility because no matter the process, A-Bio’s product failed to treat him. Schumatix made the mess, but they are trying to clean it up for them.

—Wow. The more I hear about it, the more amazed I am.

—This is the attitude of a professional. Ordinary people do not know a lot about science or pharmaceuticals, right? When they are hurting and their lives are on the line, they don’t really care about what A-Bio did right and what Schumatix did wrong. It doesn’t matter to patients; they can sort it out in court themselves, but they just want to be treated. Most of them feel that way.

Shin Jung-Ju said.

—Because they are the only people patients can rely on.

—That’s right. What should the patient do if those smart experts are distracted by their fights with each other and abandon them? That is why A-Bio put the focus on the patient.

—You’re saying the attitude A-Bio has is that even though it was Schumatix’s fault, it was still their product, and they are going to take responsibility for the patient’s treatment as the world’s top expert in glaucoma within the category of medicine?

—Exactly. That’s the kind of expert patients really want. I want other scientists and health professionals to really take after the attitude A-Bio has.

* * *

The fight with Schumatix and treating Ardip were both separate things from research. Even if those were happening, the research had to go on; not advancing was not stagnation, but regress.

Even during the hectic situation, Young-Joon continuously advanced his research. Thanks to that, Samuel, the editor of

Science

, was able to get another paper from him.

“The precise editing of target DNA using CRISPR-Cas9…”

Samuel squinted as he read the title of the paper.

“What is this talking about?”

Some technologies that were too powerful couldn’t be understood intuitively at once. Samuel began slowly reading the abstract of the paper again in confusion.

“Ahh!”

At the same time, Jessie, who understood the point of the paper a little faster than Samuel, suddenly screamed.

“What the…”

She was at a loss for words for a second from shock, then ran to Sameul at once.

“Samuel! Did you read Doctor Ryu’s paper?”

“I’m reading the abstract right now, but what is this?” Samuel said. “If it wasn’t his paper, I would have trashed it right away. The paper has no animal experiment data, and the data he has is mostly in vitro with one cell experiment.”

Samuel shook the paper in his hand.

“How can he send a paper written with such poor data to

Science

? It’s not like he doesn’t know what kind of journal

Science

is. Maybe he got overconfident because every paper he sent got published? Why did he…”

“Samuel! The thing that this paper is reporting on is a new paradigm of gene editing!” Jessie shouted.

“It does talk about gene editing in the abstract, but I haven’t read the whole thing so…”

“Slowly read through the entire thing. It’s gene scissors that can cut at any location in the three billion base pairs in human DNA. You can cut it however you want!”

“Are you talking about genes when you talk about any location?”

“No. That is also astonishing, but this technology is talking about the entire DNA.”

DNA was a much larger concept than genes. Only about two percent of DNA were genes that produced biomaterials. The rest of the DNA either controlled gene expression or maintained DNA structure.

If DNA was converted into character count, it would be about three billion letters. This was a miraculous new technology that allowed people to find and edit any location in the huge, natural database of humans that was as big as a library.

Samuel’s mouth slowly opened as he read the entire paper. This technology was something bigger than induced pluripotent stem cells. Theoretically, this could cure all the problems in the human DNA: all kinds of genetic disorders and cancer. This technology had the potential to cure all diseases that started from an error in the DNA sequence.

“Oh my God…”

Samuel’s hand trembled.

“Read the one cell experiment data they have,” Jessie said.

𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Samuel quickly flipped through the paper and found the data on the cell experiment.

“Editing the gene CCR5 of a hematopoietic cell differentiated from an induced pluripotent stem cell…”

Samuel read the paper.

“They cut CCR5 and destroyed it?”

He tilted his head in confusion.

“You don’t remember what that gene is?”

“It sounds familiar.”

“It was reported with Timothy Ray Brown. The infection route of HIV.”

Samuel felt chills run down his spine.

“Can this technology cure AIDS…”

He gulped.

* * *

After sending the paper to

Science

, Young-Joon announced the technology that would cure AIDS during the bone marrow regeneration team meeting.

“... And so, you can manipulate CCR5 this way. If you enter an RNA that matches the order of the CCR5 gene into Cas9 and put it into a cell, it can find CCR5 and cut it. After the cell corrects the place that was cut, the structure changes and does not work again,” Young-Joon said. “We used this method on the stem cell we got from Doctor Lee Jung-Hyuk and made stem cells with manipulated CCR5, and we also grew that into hematopoietic cells. We confirmed that CCR5 is not made through Western blotting. We think that we can cure AIDS if we transplant this into a patient’s bone marrow, as this is the same cure that Timothy Ray Brown received.”

The meeting room was silent from the shock. Carpentier quietly put down the americano he was drinking.

“Doctor Ryu, you know that this is much more than curing genetic disorders or AIDS, right?”

“Yes.”

“This technology allows gene editing.”

“Yes.”

“In ten years, there might be people who try to edit the genes of IVF babies.”

Young-Joon nodded.

“I know.”

AIDS could be cured if the patient received bone marrow with destroyed CCR5. Put differently, an HIV-resistant baby if CCR5 was modified from the embryo stage.

When Cas9 would be announced, research would surely begin in that direction somewhere with a relatively weak sense of ethics. No one couldn’t stop it; technological advancement would cross ethical borders when given time. The start would be HIV-immune babies, but what if it went further than that? Someone could manipulate the genes that determine height, vision, or skin and create a customized baby. At first, people would be afraid to step forward, but people would eventually try. There would be a huge ethical issue.

Would humanity be able to handle that future? In the case that something goes wrong, huge bullets of criticism may fly towards Young-Joon, who first found the technology.

“That was why I contemplated on revealing this technology,” Young-Joon said.

“But you’ve decided to use it?” Carpentier asked.

“Yes,” Young-Joon replied firmly. “I can’t abandon the people who are suffering in pain from AIDS.”

“This technology is certainly more than shocking,” Carpentier said. “But I do agree with you, Doctor Ryu. I also agree with manipulating CCR5 with this technology and curing AIDS.”

“Thank you.”

“People may cheer now, but there will be people who do weird things with it and if so, religious or various conservative organizations may challenge this technology. They might be a harder enemy to fight than people like Schumatix,” Carpentier warned.

“I understand. There is always light and darkness to great technology. The same knife could be a scalpel that can save patients in a doctor’s hand, or it can be a weapon that kills people in a gang’s hands. It would be nice if this technology was only used safely and in the right way, but some people may try dangerous things too quickly,” Young-Joon replied.

“But everyone, there are thirty million AIDS patients in the world. And the number of patients with cancer or genetic disorders we can treat with the technology is in the billions,” Young-Joon said. “I am not going to abandon people in front of me who are suffering in pain just because I am afraid of an uncertain future in the far future. If a problem happens because of this technology, it will also be science that solves it.”