godfather of surgery

Chapter 1086 Never seen the world

Recently, in a short period of time, Professor Yang has launched a series of big projects, which makes everyone feel incredible.

Professor Yang must be an alien. His imagination is off the charts. In a short period of time, he has proposed several extremely creative research directions, each of which is of great significance and a step forward in exploring medical problems.

In fact, in addition to a solid knowledge base, scientific research also requires a rich imagination and a strong curiosity about the unknown world. Only in this way can one regard the originally boring research as interesting work, take an unconventional path in research, and achieve some groundbreaking results.

Regardless of whether these research topics proposed by Yang Ping will be successful, these ideas are extremely groundbreaking and can provide rich inspiration to later generations and open a door to a new world for them.

The discussion is still going on, and everyone's topics are becoming clearer and more mature through repeated discussions and adjustments.

"You mean that some fragments after the disintegration of immune cells may be able to freely combine under certain conditions to form new larger fragments? For example, this is how the K factor comes from." Lu Xiaolu asked. He felt that this idea was a bit far-fetched. No one had ever thought of this before. Such a thing could happen in the cell culture medium grown in the laboratory.

Yang Ping nodded and said, "In ancient times, lightning or solar particles could have stimulated some chemicals to form organic matter. In the culture medium in the laboratory, it is entirely possible that those gene fragments could have randomly recombined. However, this is only a hypothesis at the moment and requires rigorous experiments to verify it."

In fact, many advances in science started with brilliant hypotheses. For example, the double helix structure of DNA and the mosaic structure of cell membranes all started with a brilliant hypothesis, and finally experiments verified that the hypothesis was correct.

"If this hypothesis is true, we will be able to establish a theory to unravel some of the offensive and defensive principles behind the immune system. At that time, our entire research approach will be broadened, and tumor treatment will be brought into a free realm," Yang Ping added.

Yang Ping's words inspired everyone's confidence, and they all secretly decided to give it a try.

Lu Xiaolu took over and said, "It is necessary to carry out multiple projects at the same time. The current shortcoming of immune cell therapy is its insufficient ability to treat solid tumors. For example, T cell therapy is effective for blood tumors, but not for solid tumors. This is because blood tumor cells float in the blood, and immune cells also float in the blood. It's like a naval battle. These cells are like warships, and warships fight each other with the help of the sea as a platform. And immune cells fighting solid tumors is like urban street fighting. In urban street fighting, warships can't play a role." Lu Xiaolu originally studied tumor immunotherapy, so he was very familiar with this.

“Yes, but delivery viruses do not have this disadvantage. They can penetrate any solid tumor and enter the interior of tumor cells. Therefore, there are no obstacles to delivering viruses, whether it is a blood tumor or a solid tumor.” Professor Zhang Zhiwei expressed his opinion.

"We will carefully study the internal and external conditions for the formation of factor K. After a clear understanding of these conditions, we can decipher the formation process of factor K." Tang Shun said that factor K was discovered when tumor cells were cultured in a cell laboratory.

"Yes, if we can study the formation mechanism of K factor clearly, we can reconstruct similar biological factors in the laboratory in the future." Yang Ping affirmed everyone's opinions, "Regarding viral therapy and cell therapy, can you tell us about the current international research progress?"

Lu Xiaolu is researching on tumor treatment, and he took the initiative to take on the task of introducing:

"Currently, the most successful cell therapy is T cell therapy, and I won't go into detail about its history. In a clinical trial conducted by a US team on patients with residual or recurrent brain malignant tumors called glioblastoma, 19 of the 16 people who received oncolytic virus drug treatment survived for more than a year, and three of them survived for more than five years. The tumors of these three people became smaller and did not recur. However, under traditional treatment methods, 1% of patients with recurrent glioblastoma will die within a year. It can be seen that viral therapy has shown great prospects, so its prospects have been confirmed."

"As for the current progress of viral therapy, the most advanced research result of the Japanese is the oncolytic therapy product after recombinant herpes simplex virus type 1. Herpes simplex virus type 1 has three important genomes: α3 gene - the human body has a self-protection mechanism. Cells infected by the virus will self-destruct to prevent the virus from proliferating. However, the α34.5 gene will try to prevent this and allow the host cells to continue to survive. They used genetic technology to make α34.5 ineffective, and the virus can also proliferate in cancer cells. ICP34.5 gene - it produces enzymes that can synthesize viral deoxyribonucleic acid. If it is not allowed to work, the virus cannot proliferate in normal cells, so it can only proliferate in tumor cells. α6 gene - it has a stealth function that makes it difficult for the human immune system to detect the virus. If this group of genes is artificially deleted, the virus loses its stealth ability. Originally, cancer cells are the patient's own cells, so the immune system will not consider it an enemy, but tumor cells will be "marked" after being infected by viruses that have lost their stealth function, and cancer cells will be easily discovered by the immune system, thus becoming the target of attack by the immune system.

"Japan is currently the most advanced country in viral therapy, but it took 20 years for their products to be developed and put into use, and the results are not ideal. They can only be used as auxiliary products, such as shrinking tumors before surgery to facilitate surgery. Our approach is completely different from theirs. They just use viruses as markers to attract the immune system to attack. In essence, it is still immunotherapy."

"Our viral therapy truly uses viruses to penetrate, mark and hunt, relying on viruses to complete all functions, so we have to reverse some steps. For example, the invisibility cloak function of the α47 gene, we do not eliminate this function, but strengthen it."

"Cell therapy is currently the most advanced in the United States, and CAR-T cell applications are the most mature and commercially operated. Compared with viral therapy, cell therapy has achieved a curative effect on certain tumors, so everyone is familiar with it. Our laboratory is also currently conducting CAR-T cell therapy, so I will not say much about cell therapy."

"In the near future we will surpass them. We are already ahead of them in basic research in this area, and these new topics will definitely occupy the forefront in this area." Yang Ping said without any modesty. For Yang Ping, there is no need to be modest in this regard.

"My idea of ​​viral therapy has a flaw. No matter how we improve it, we cannot eliminate its inherent shortcomings. It is a foreign substance and will be attacked by the immune system. Immune cell therapy does not have such a flaw. If we use the idea of ​​oncolysis, it actually has no lethality. The Japanese have been doing it for 20 years and have only achieved that result." Tang Shun still thinks cell therapy has more prospects.

Professor Zhang Zhiwei disagrees: "The poor effect of cell therapy on solid tumors is also a flaw. It is difficult for cells to penetrate the blood vessel wall from the blood vessels, and then penetrate layer after layer of barriers to enter the tumor. Viruses can easily enter the solid tumor. As for the virus being attacked by the immune system, it can be evaded. Professor Lu just said that the α1 gene carried by herpes simplex virus type 47 is a stealth gene. I think adenovirus or other viruses may also have this gene. We can use recombinant technology to enhance this function. Even if other viruses do not have this gene, we can implant it. It is not difficult."

Academic conferences of Yang Ping's team have always been straightforward, and everyone doesn't need to play with social etiquette, which can improve communication efficiency and avoid ineffective losses. "It doesn't matter. We don't need to argue about who has a better future now. All this will be judged by the future. We must study all possible routes. In the process of research, we may learn from each other and learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses. We will also open a third route to implant some genomes on immune cells into carrier viruses such as adenovirus, so that we can learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses. Of course, this is just my idea, but it doesn't matter. Don't have any psychological burden. Scientific research does not mean that it must succeed or produce results. Everyone should relax and study. If the path is not feasible, you can adjust it at any time. If it is feasible, continue to go." Yang Ping expressed his meaning. Don't worry, there will be no bias in scientific research funds.

"Everyone's research topic is independent, but at the same time it is part of a larger topic, so everyone shares data during the research process, so that they can inspire and learn from each other. Different fields need to communicate more, and maybe new things will emerge in the process of communication. No one can predict what the future will be like, so we can only cross the river by feeling the stones."

Now that there is sufficient funding for scientific research, Yang Ping wants to provide everyone with a relaxed and free scientific research environment without the burden of utilitarianism.

"Professor Yang, I want to know how much money you are going to invest in our research project this time? This way I can have a better idea of ​​the budget, because the team needs to be expanded, equipment needs to be added, and the entire laboratory needs to be expanded." Lin Lan asked directly about the funding, because it is indeed impossible to carry out these studies with the existing team members and laboratory hardware conditions, and if we want to expand, it will not be a small amount of money. If we rely on ourselves, the research funds of the past ten years will not be enough for this project.

"Yes, I would like to know too, so that I can know what to do next." Professor Zhang Zhiwei is also very concerned about this issue.

Professor Lin Lan and Professor Zhang Zhiwei are professors at Nandu Medical University. Although they are familiar with Yang Ping, they are not very clear about the details of his scientific research fund. They only know that he has a scientific research fund, but they still don’t know what the strength of the fund is.

Now that Yang Ping has set up such a big business, the two professors are very eager to join his big team, but after they calculated, they realized that the investment would be considerable.

Tang Shun and Lu Xiaolu are from Sanbo Hospital and are very clear about the strength of Yang Ping's scientific research fund, especially Tang Shun. He is the gold medal "salesman" of the scientific research fund and has brought in a lot of money for the scientific research fund. For example, the stem cell therapy project has now raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and this amount is still increasing.

Yang Ping looked at everyone and paused. He usually didn't care much about money, so he couldn't come up with a number. He could only say, "Enough!"

Yes, this answer is quite vague, which is equivalent to no answer.

At this time, Tang Shun took over the conversation: "Professor Yang usually doesn't care about the money in the fund account, so he is not sensitive to money. He certainly can't tell you the specific number. After you finish the budget, he can guarantee to sign and transfer the money. If you must tell me the amount of funds for a plan, let me tell you the bottom line. For this big project, we have no problem investing 10 billion in the first phase."

10 million?
As expected, he is wealthy and powerful. I heard that Professor Yang is not short of money. The legend is true. He seems so low-key at ordinary times, but he can actually come up with 1 billion in scientific research funds at a time.

Professor Lin Lan, Zhang Zhiwei, and their assistants were stunned when they heard the number. They had never heard of so much funding being given at one time. 10 billion yuan, with several research groups, it would be no problem for each to get to million yuan. This was already a huge number.

"I have an idea. Let's start working on the budget as soon as possible." Lin Lan was extremely excited. Finally, she didn't have to calculate so carefully.

Professor Zhang Zhiwei is so excited that his hands are shaking. By this calculation, his research group can get 200 to 300 million yuan, and this is for the early stage, 200 to 300 million yuan in funding.

"Only 10 billion? How come so many research groups have so little? Didn't they say they would give out 50 billion?" Yang Ping was a little dissatisfied with the figure, and immediately asked Tang Shun why the funds had shrunk. He was usually a generous man, so why was he so stingy now? There was no need to hide his wealth in such occasions.

After being questioned by Yang Ping, Tang Shun immediately realized that he was wrong. He had studied abroad before and was used to speaking US dollars.

"Professor, it's US dollars. I meant 10 billion US dollars, not RMB." Tang Shun quickly explained.

US dollars? 10 billion?
Lin Lan's eyes were big to begin with, and now they widened even further as she stared at Yang Ping, waiting for his confirmation. He couldn't be joking, right?

Professor Zhang Zhiwei's hand shook as he picked up the teacup, and the tea spilled directly onto the table. My goodness, what kind of rich man is this? He just took off immediately. He had all the equipment he wanted, and he could poach all the people he wanted.

"Professor Yang? Don't scare me, are you telling the truth?" Professor Zhang Zhiwei quickly took out a pack of napkins and threw them on the tea on the table, saying while absorbing the water.

"That's right. A lot of our research funds arrive in batches, and sometimes there isn't a lot of cash on the books, so this is the amount we have for the first phase, and we'll allocate more funds based on progress and demand later." Yang Ping confirmed the number reported by Tang Shun.

Professor Zhang Zhiwei now feels like a person who has never seen the world.