Chapter 279: FRB (7)

“Myelodysplastic syndrome is usually a problem because the quality and amount of the patient’s blood cells is very low,” said Professor Albert.

“The hematopoietic stem cells have dysplasia, so the white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets from it can’t function properly. That’s why these patients have anemia and are susceptible to infections. If the white blood cells don’t work properly, their immune system will be a mess. And because they have low platelet counts, they bleed often, which doesn’t stop well either.”

“That’s why she bled so much from her arms and legs when she got shot,” Harris said.

“That’s right. Patients who have myelodysplastic syndrome can only have conservative, life-sustaining treatment by receiving normal blood, like how patients with renal failure receive dialysis,” Albert said. “Even that doesn’t work in the late stages. A significant portion of cases results in acute leukemia. The only solution is to be cured or anything like that is a bone marrow transplant.”

“Then, it’s fine, right? A-GenBio developed a bone marrow transplant method using hematopoietic stem cells made from induced pluripotent stem cells. All that’s left to do is for Doctor Ryu to treat her,” Harris said.

“But myelodysplastic syndrome usually occurs after the age of fifty. It’s rare for it to occur at such a young age. Isaiah seemed to be born with it; it was bad when she was a newborn, then developed in infancy,” Albert explained, though he seemed a little doubtful.

“To be honest, we chose myelodysplastic syndrome because it fits her symptoms the best, but we have to treat it as the first ever case to be reported since it’s due to genetic engineering. From a doctor’s perspective, no matter how great Doctor Ryu is, I don’t know what he can do about a disease he’s never seen in a week...”

“But he was able to revive brain-dead people.”

“That’s why I’m still inclined to trust him.”

Click.

Young-Joon came out of Isaiah Franklin’s room.

“It must be uncomfortable to use one of the two rooms in this small hideout as a hospital room,” Young-Joon said.

“Have you talked to Isaiah?”

“Yes. I’m going to bring the clinical trial consent form tomorrow and explain it again.”

“Consent form...”

“I know time is of the essence, but we still have to do what’s necessary.”

*

Isaiah Franklin was a cloned human being—a human reconstructed from the nucleus of her mother, Elsie Franklin. As such, although Isaiah Franklin was born in 1986 and around the same age as Young-Joon, her cell biological age was similar to that of Elsie’s, which was in the late fifties.

—That’s where the problem arises.

Rosaline intervened from the side.

“It reminds me of Dolly, the cloned sheep,” Young-Joon

—The sheep that was cloned from a mammary gland cell?

“Yeah. That’s why the name...”

Young-Joon suddenly paused.

—Why?

“Nothing.”

—Why did you stop all of a sudden? How did she get the name?

Curious, Rosaline began nagging Young-Joon for a response.

“No, it’s nothing. Dolly, the name of the cloned sheep, came from a pop star named Dolly Parton.”

—Were the researchers fans of that pop star?

“...”

Dolly Parton was a pop star famous for her voluptuous breasts. They named the sheep Dolly to honor that she originated from the mammary glands.Fịndd new updates at novelhall.com

Rosaline went on.

—But Isaiah Franklin was congenitally born with about thirty years’ worth of aging. Isaiah’s holding up okay right now as Elsie wasn’t a senior or anything, but all of her organs will start to age rapidly in about ten years.

“Then what happens?”

—She will have geriatric disease when she’s in her forties, and she will look like a grandma. However, humans haven’t categorized aging as a pathological condition yet; they think it’s natural. What do you think?

“Progeria syndrome is already a disease. It’s already been classified as a disease, no matter what I think of it.”

—If you want to cure it, there’s a way.

“How?”

—When you do the bone marrow transplant, put a slightly modified version of the telomerase gene into the hematopoietic stem cells.

“Telomerase?”

Telomerase was a biomolecule that lengthened telomeres. It was discovered during the height of the telomere boom, and many scientists tried to use it to extend human life. However, despite the enormous amount of money and labor invested by many scientists to uncover clinical applications of telomerase, there was ultimately no progress. This was because while telomerase could extend telomeres, it could also cause cancer. It was like opposites attracting.

Cells with extended telomeres could divide again and again beyond the limit of division. If controlled properly, they could become immortal by replacing damaged cells, but they became tumors if they spiraled out of control.

Eventually, scientists gave up because the technology was too difficult and dangerous to apply to humans, and the craze died down.

—We’ll use blood cells as carriers of telomerase through bone marrow transplantation. We need to send telomerase throughout Isaiah Franklin’s body to extend the telomeres of approximately ten trillion cells, each for a specific duration, and then stop.

“Is that possible?”

—I can. We just need to administer trace amounts of the inhibitor at specific times, either intravenously or through injections, while I look at it in Synchronization Mode. The problem is that you have no way of explaining how you figured out those timings and injection locations.

“...”

—Or you could just give up thirty years of aging that Isaiah Franklin was born with. It wouldn’t cure her though.

*

Ryu Ji-Won came out of the library at seven in the evening.

“You guys go ahead. I have to eat at home today.”

Ryu Ji-Won said goodbye to her friends and walked down the main street outside the campus. Today was a day of much pain for Ryu Ji-Won’s family: it’s the remembrance day of Ryu Sae-Yi, their youngest sister.

‘What is Young-Joon doing...’

Young-Joon always came home on this day, but at some point, he started traveling around the world with a superhuman schedule. He ended up calling today to say he wouldn’t be able to come home.

Ryu Ji-Won considered calling him out of concern, but she didn’t.

‘I’m sure he’s busy...’

Ryu Ji-Won arrived at the entrance of their apartment complex. As she was about to go inside...

“Ms. Ryu Ji-Won?”

A man suddenly came up to her.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Do you know this person by any chance?”

The man, with his hat pulled low over his face, held out a photo. It was a picture of Young-Joon and Rosaline taken at an amusement park.