Chapter 58: A Next-Generation General Hospital (5)
Like the last time, Young-Joon was planning to put out a job listing on Science as well as other international academic journals. It was sad, but no matter how outstanding A-Bio was, Korea was just a country just touching on science from an international perspective.
On the other hand, the IUBMB was one of the largest academic conferences in the world. Professors from prestigious universities, key individuals from huge pharmaceutical industries, and lead scientists from labs were commonly seen here.
Young-Joon could not miss this opportunity. He met people with the intention to recruit all his staff for A-Bio and the hospital he was going to build. Fortunately, many skilled individuals came to A-Bio’s booth continuously since his presence at the Integrative Brain Disorder conference was quite intense.
After hours of interviews back-to-back, Young-Joon received a call from one of the people who organized the IUBMB conference. It was Director James from the White House’s Office of Science and Technology.
—America was going to scout you, a Korean, but instead, you are taking all of America’s intellectuals.
James said with a chuckle.
“There are no borders to science,” Young-Joon replied.
—Hahaha. Touché.
“It’s not a problem, right?”
—Of course not. I think what you are doing right now is a universal advancement for humanity. Let’s put aside our nationality for a while.
“A lot of people may return there after we build A-Bio’s cancer lab beside the National Cancer Institute.” Ñøv€lRapture marked the initial hosting of this chapter on Ñôv€lß¡n.
—Will you return them after training them?
“Of course not. I will learn a lot from them,” Young-Joon said humbly.
—It’s really a relief that there is someone like you in this world, Doctor Ryu.
James said.
—I also want to donate to you with my own money.
“We are ready to receive it at any time,” Young-Joon replied.
After having meetings with several people and meeting investors and donors, the time was four o’clock. Young-Joon left the booth to his employees and went to an empty conference room with Song Ji-Hyun.
“Thank you for being considerate earlier,” Song Ji-Hyun said.
“Considerate?”
“You pushed investors to come to our booth by talking to me.”
“What? I didn’t,” Young-Joon replied like he was confused.
“Huh? But... You purposely greeted me in front of people...”
“That’s normal, isn’t it? Why does it matter that we are in front of other people? If I didn’t greet my colleagues we are doing a project with and pretended to not know them, that would be rude.”
Young-Joon grinned.
“... But didn’t you purposely schedule a work meeting in front of the investors and reveal that we are working together?”
“I was going to talk to you about work anyway when I met you here. I don’t really care about those investors. It’s more important for me to make more progress in our research as we can by having a meeting with you than what those people are thinking and doing. But we don’t have to hide the fact that we are collaborating companies and secretly meet each other because of them, right? It’s not like it’s wrong for us to collaborate with you.”
Song Ji-Hyun lightly bit her lower lip.
“Right...”
Young-Joon was right. The reason that he nicely accompanied her to her booth was also probably because they had to go in the same direction. He probably had no ulterior motives. He also set up his own meeting when they held the probiotics meeting at A-Bio even though he was the CEO, did he not?
That was just the kind of person Young-Joon was. He did not engulf himself in power. He was the same person he was before becoming a star in the scientific community. He would have acted the same way even if he was an ordinary scientist who hadn’t made iPSCs yet. Of course, he probably knew that his actions would push investors to Celigener, but that wasn’t a reason for him to act differently.
Song Ji-Hyun had heard about Young-Joon from a few people, including Choi Myung-Joon, while working with A-Bio because of probiotics. They said he strictly went by the book and that he was a single-minded scientist who never mixed power or personal relationships with science.
He really just greeted her because she was an employee of a company he was working with, and he scheduled a meeting because he wanted to talk about work. The reason he told the nearby investors or scientists that she was from a venture company he was working with was because they were curious and he wanted to be considerate of that. That ended up being a huge benefit to Celligener and Song Ji-Hyun, but he did not do it on purpose as he had no personal feelings...
“Doctor Song?”
“Oh, yes?”
Song Ji-Hyun, who was momentarily lost in thought, was startled and quickly raised her head.
“What are you thinking about so hard? You didn’t even answer me when I called you,” Young-Joon said, grinning.
“Oh, sorry. What did you say?”
“The capsule coating that we’re going to use for the pancreatic cancer treatment. I want to wrap the Amuc that’s separated from Clorotonis limuvitus and make it into a treatment for type-2 diabetes.”
“You want to coat Amuc?”
“Yes. How is the development of the capsule coating technology going?”
“I was doing experiments right up until I had to leave for America. The technology to create a coat to protect materials from stomach acid isn’t that difficult in the first place. We also applied a part of the chitosan double-layer coating method you told us about before as well. The coating technology itself is in its final stages.”
“That’s good. We can coat a biomaterial like Amuc with that, right?”
“It should be possible.”
“Good. Let’s make some progress on the treatment for pancreatic cancer and diabetes together when we return to Korea.”
“... Sure.”
Song Ji-Hyun’s voice was weak.
* * *
On Sunday morning, Young-Joon arrived at Incheon airport. His two-week schedule in the U.S. was finished. Now, A-Bio was the center of attention internationally, and they had already received a significant amount of funds for the establishment of the hospital.
“Good work everyone. You’re all free to go. For the people who gave me their weekends, take Monday and Tuesday off,” Young-Joon said. A
After letting the employees who helped A-Bio’s booth go, he also said goodbye to Alice.
When Young-Joon was developing the flu drug and treatments for domestic animals or livestock diseases, he had outsourced it. It was because those treatments were simple to make; after synthesizing it, they just had to treat animals or cells with it to check the effect.
But the difficulty of growing another structure or tissue with stem cells was on another level. It was similar to how everyone could easily make instant noodles, but the more complicated the dish was, it was difficult for someone to make if they weren't a skilled chef, even if they had the recipe. Also, because it was difficult to control all the variables in biological experiments, they had to consider where the water was from: the Han River or Jeju Island.
It was ridiculous, but this was necessary as sometimes, the results varied depending on the line of the manufacturing factory the culture medium was made in. And for experiments that hadn’t been done before, such as the differentiation of stem cells into novel structures, the frontline experimenter’s ability to control the situation was especially important.
“We have to optimize the method for cell transfection by examining the condition of the cell and its differentiation stage, or use FACS salting methods. There are a lot of things we still have to mediate,” Felicida said. “But it’s doable if he sketches out the plan this well. We should be able to do it somehow.”
Click.
Principal Scientist Chloe’s team came out of the CEO’s office.
“What are you in charge of?” Jacob asked.
“Using stem cells to regenerate skin,” Chloe responded with a nervous expression. She was also given a difficult experiment and felt both passion and determination.
In the CEO’s office, Young-Joon was looking over the distribution of work among his team members again. Excluding the probiotics team and the pancreatic cancer treatment team, he had divided the remaining scientists into four teams. He had assigned them the spine, bone marrow, cartilage, and skin. The last team was the Life Creation team.
Knock knock.
Cheon Ji-Myung knocked on the door and came inside. Then, Bae Sun-Mi, Park Dong-Hyun, Jung Hae-Rim, and Koh Soon-Yeol sat down.
“What are we making with stem cells?” Park Dong-Hyun asked.
“I am going to give you organoids.”
“Organoids?”
“Yes. It is the most important thing that we are starting with stem cells. Organoids are small biological tissues that mimic a person’s organ. It has the same structure and function as organs, but it’s just smaller. To put it another way, we will be able to grow artificial organs if this succeeds,” Young-Joon said. “We will use organoids for precise diagnosis and use artificial organs to treat patients. And we are going to start that process now.”
“Oh...” Jung Hae-Rim exclaimed in worry. “To be honest, I don’t know if we can do it. It’s too difficult... None of us have worked with organoids before.”
“I know. But there isn’t anyone who has experience with organoids at our company right now. The person who applied to our company from France has done organoids before, but they said that it would take some time for them to start working here because they have to sort things out there.”
“So are you saying that we don’t have any organoid experts at our company right now?” Cheon Ji-Myung asked.
“Yes.” Young-Joon nodded.
Cheon Ji-Myung chuckled emptily.
They were starting one of the most difficult and newest technologies in the world as a new business, but they were just starting from scratch without anyone who had experience with it?
But it was Young-Joon; he was probably telling us to do it because it was possible.
“Don’t worry about the project itself because I can plan the experiment scheme. But it will still be very difficult,” Young-Joon said. “This experiment really depends on the person, so they have to be someone who is extremely trained in biology experiments.”
“...”
“That’s why I am giving it to you.”
“But there are world-class scientists at our company right now...” Bae Sun-Mi said in a dejected voice.
“I think that the people in this room right now are the most qualified. Because you have been creating life.”
The Life Creation team members looked confused.
“Does it have something to do with creating life?” Jung Hae-Rim asked.
“No, but it has one thing in common.”
“One thing?”
“That they are both impossible projects with humanity’s current level of technology.”
“...”
“I’m being serious right now. Life creation. You guys tried all sorts of different things in order to do that, right? Senior Park Dong-Hyun spat in the liquid culture medium because he tried everything that he could.”
“Ack! How did you know that?” Park Dong-Hyun asked in surprise.
“It was in the experiment log. I read it when I was at A-Gen.”
“... I wasn’t in my right mind because I was angry after getting grilled by Gil Hyung-Joon.”
“All the people who have joined our company are all famous in their own field, so I think they wouldn’t be familiar with trying something new. But not this team.”
“We did try everything and anything to make Rosaline and be a little less berated at the year-end seminar at A-Gen,” Cheon Ji-Myung said.
“Exactly. So, you will be able to do it. You would have accumulated a lot of different experimentation skills while going through hell. You can do it. Have confidence.”
“What should we do?”
“Let’s start with an organ that has a relatively easy structure.”
“Which one?”
“The intestine,” Young-Joon said. “Specifically, the small intestine. After we succeed with organoids, we are going to scale it up and create a small intestine.”
“Making an organ artificially...” Jung Hae-Rim mumbled in surprise.
“It is quite common for patients who have resected parts of their small intestine due to tumors or Crohn’s Disease to get short bowel syndrome. They suffer in pain from severe stomach aches, chronic diarrhea, fatty stool, dehydration, and lethargy. If it’s severe, they end up getting a transplant. But there is no way to do that if they don’t have a donor,” Young-Joon said. “With our technology, they won’t need a donor. Let’s be the ones to improve their quality of life.”
“Alright,” Cheon Ji-Myung replied.
Young-Joon sorted out the detailed experimentation method and told them. They were all smart elites, so the five of them quickly understood his strategy.
After they left, Young-Joon was lost in thought while holding his coffee mug. Reconstruction of the spine, bone marrow, cartilage, skin tissue, and the small intestine using stem cells: these five projects would severely threaten the livelihood of existing large pharmaceutical companies. For example, if cartilage regeneration became possible and was commercialized, all the arthritis-related drugs in the market would die.
Places like Schumatix did not do anything after his presentation at the Integrative Brain Disorder conference, but they were definitely planning something.
Young-Joon remembered what James had warned him about.
‘He said to be careful of ending up like Tesla.’
Young-Joon took a sip of his hot americano.
1. Gaviscon is an antacid product that relieves heartburn, indigestion, and other things. It’s a meme that Korean people use when something has relieved their frustration. ?