Chapter 62: The First Product (3)
In order for people to buy the stem cell and optic nerve differentiation kit, they had to receive basic training about the experimentation method from A-Bio, as A-Bio would not sell it unless one attended the session. Although A-Bio couldn’t reimburse the transportation or accommodation expenses, the training itself was free.
As such, scientists from all over the world swarmed to A-Bio after the third phase of the glaucoma clinical trial ended. Usually, A-Bio’s stem cell experts would do the training, but Young-Joon decided to give the first lecture himself as it was the first time.
“Look, there are two kits. They look like eye drops, right? One drop of solution will come out of them if you squeeze the bottle,” Young-Joon explained as he showed the kit to the audience. “They are either called the first kit and second kit, or called the dedifferentiation and optic nerve differentiation kit.”
Young-Joon dropped one drop of each solution onto a tissue to show them.
“First, you need to overexpress the genes SOX2, cMyc, OCT4, and KTF4 in order to dedifferentiate somatic cells to stem cells.”
Young-Joon took a culture dish out of the incubator and showed it to the scientists.
“The sample of the patient’s somatic cell you harvested onto the culture plate should look like this. There’s a picture of a microscope beside it, right? Now, this somatic cell is mine,” Young-Joon said with a chuckle.[1] “We are going to add ten drops of solution number one, the dedifferentiation kit we developed.”
Drop! Drop!
“There is a living virus in this solution. For you to handle this, you will have to get a laboratory inspection and permit from your respective countries,” Young-Joon said. “This virus inserts the four genes I mentioned earlier into the somatic cell’s DNA. Then, dedifferentiation occurs as these genes are expressed.”
Actually, all of the scientists here knew that as they had all read Young-Joon’s paper, but even so, they passionately wrote down everything that he was saying.
“The volume ratio is one drop per culture medium, and you must distribute the solution evenly across the culture plate. After three days, they will have become iPSC. Let’s use iPSCs that I prepared beforehand since I have to show you how to do it.”
Young-Joon pulled out another culture dish.
“It will look something like this after three days, and you can see that morphologically, it has the structure of a stem cell. You can also additionally verify it through things like DNA methylation analysis,” Young-Joon explained. “I will leave that up to you. The next step is to make these iPSCs into optic nerves. Now, we use the second kit, the optic nerve differentiation one.”
Drop! Drop!
Young-Joon put a few droplets of the solution from the optic nerve differentiation kit onto the culture medium.
“They will now differentiate into optic nerves. But at this step, you must use a culture medium that contains five micromoles of hydrocortisone,” Young-Joon said. “It’s not that difficult. Everyone will actually be doing this experiment for about ten days here. I will hand out experiment protocol books so that you can read that and follow it after you leave.”
“Thank you.”
“I appreciate it.”
As they began their experiments, Young-Joon silently observed them. There were several scientists from numerous countries: Switzerland, Britain, USA, France, and more. They were also affiliated with different places; some were part of huge pharmaceutical companies like Roche or Pfizer, and some were from venture companies he had never heard of.
However, Young-Joon had his eye on one person.
‘Daniel.’
He was a scientist from Schumatix. He looked very friendly, but Young-Joon wondered what kind of person he was. Whatever it was, he would get training for ten days and buy the virus to take home. And there was a very high chance that it was going to be used in India.
* * *
Young-Joon was sending someone an email from his office.
[Hello, this is Ryu Young-Joon from A-Bio. I am sending you an email from the business card you gave me. There is something I want to ask as a favor. It might be a secretive talk. Please reply to this email if you are willing.] This chapter made its debut appearance via N0v3lB1n.
Time passed, and it was now evening. Young-Joon was getting ready to leave when he got an email on his phone.
[Please use the cell phone we sent you. Pick up the phone at 9 PM in Korea time.]
‘A cell phone they sent me?’
As Young-Joon was confused, someone knocked on his office door.
“Sir? It’s Yoo Song-Mi.”
“Come in.”
Yoo Song-Mi was the secretary that was hired three days ago. She handed him a small package.
“Thank you.”
Young-Joon opened the package to see a tacky-looking foldable phone in it. When it became nine o’clock, he really got a call on this phone.
“Hello?”
—Holy... Aren’t you just administering a tumor at that point? Doesn’t the cancer spread right away?
“We put a safety mechanism on it. The cells that don’t differentiate in a certain period of time will trigger their apoptosis mechanism and die,” Young-Joon said. “The optic nerve differentiation is the same as well. If the differentiation isn’t promoted by the second kit, all the stem cells will die in three weeks.”
—...
“Originally, it was a safety mechanism that we put just in case. This was just in case an unskilled scientist didn’t faithfully follow A-Bio’s protocol, or if they didn’t thoroughly verify that the stem cells were properly made with something like FACS. It was to ensure that even if some undifferentiated stem cells that were left go into the patient’s eyes, it doesn’t cause cancer.”
James couldn’t say anything. Nothing came out of his mouth because he was so shocked.
‘This is possible?’
“But if the scientist really ‘made a mistake’, most of the cells will be established in the retina because they are optic nerves. A very small number of stem cells will self-destruct in the patient’s eye. So, most people don’t know that there are stem cells left. They will just think that they’ve been cured.”
—Probably.
“But what if a scientist just puts in a large amount of stem cells that haven’t even started to differentiate into optic nerves in the patient’s eye?”
James gulped.
—What happens?
“When the safety mechanism is activated, because there is a large number of stem cells, they will aggregate[3]due to the nature of the destruction process. The aggregated mass will be big, and it will look like a tumor from a glance.
—Then...
“If Schumatix reports something about cancer, it will mean that they didn’t use the second kit and administered stem cells into the patient’s eyes,” Young-Joon said. “I will declare war at that moment. I will tell them to see whether the tumor on the patient’s eye disappears in three weeks. If it does, I will tell them that it’s not cancer, but the safety mechanism activating. I will argue about how scientists at a place like Schumatix did the experiment to get results like that.”
—They are either so horribly unskilled that they forgot a step even after getting training from the production site, or they tried to cause cancer in the patient’s eyes by purposely administering undifferentiated stem cells.
“Yes,” Young-Joon replied. “And if it’s the latter, I will do everything in my power to banish them from the scientific community forever.”
—... I guess I shouldn’t be worried about you. The bomb is in Schumatix’s hand. Then, what is it that you want to ask me for?
“There are two things. This probably won’t happen, but please stop it if Schumatix doesn’t use my kit at all and tries to induce a completely different disease in the patient.”
—You don’t have to worry about that. Schumatix is still one of the greatest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and there are a lot of intellectuals there. They won’t make a move that stupid. They would be shooting themselves in the foot if they did that.
—No matter what kind of disease they create, it will be hard for them to attack you if it’s not cancer because people will think that they made a mistake, whether it’s in the growing phase or the administration itself. And the truth will come out if they follow the evidence left on the patient’s eye. Their only option is cancer, the biggest problem with stem cells.
“I think so as well. I am just trying to be prepared for anything out of worry.”
—I see that I am also one of the safety mechanisms. Alright. What’s your next request?
“If I do a press conference and go to war with Schumatix, they might try to remove the patient out of anxiety,” Young-Joon said. “They might do that so that the world doesn’t see that the thing they claimed was a tumor was actually just stem cells in the natural process of dying from the safety mechanism. I am saying that they will try to get rid of the evidence.”
—They could do that.
“In that case, please protect the patient.”
—Now I get why you called me, and why it was so secretive.
“Yes.”
—You are asking me to move the CIA, right?
“Yes, that’s right.”
James smiled.
—I will report this to the President and begin. And I will also get you more information on this. If Schumatix reports of a tumor, I will let you know how far up the ladder it goes.
“Thank you.”
—Don’t forget to partner with the National Cancer Institute and build A-Bio’s cancer research lab here.
“Of course.”
1. This is a Korean meme originating from a news anchor reporting about how a person stole the certificate of a registered seal, which the actual owner provided to use their car as collateral for loans, and stole the car. The anchor says, ”Now, this somatic cell is mine” to reenact how the car was stolen. ?
2. Spoken in English. The rest of Young-Joon’s conversation with James is in English. ?
3. a process in which cells clump together ?