A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 320 Pandora's Box (Bonus Chapter)

"Hey, Lao Song, it's rare for you to come all this way."

In the professor's office at the Huaxia Academy of Medical Sciences, Liu Jishou looked at Song Chaoming, who was carrying a bottle of wine, and said in a sarcastic tone, his voice full of bitterness.

Since he recommended Chen Hui to Song Chaoming, Song Chaoming's laboratory has produced many significant results. Not only has his own key project been completed, but he is also collaborating with Chen Hui on another project. Given Chen Hui's track record, it is believed that it will not be long before Song Chaoming and his team will be able to publish a groundbreaking achievement.

Western scholars were laughing at Song Chaoming for overestimating his abilities by publishing his findings in an obscure journal called "Huaxia Mathematics." But Liu Jishou knew that the findings were completely dispensable. Following Chen Shen, how could he not have a good outcome?
Since that day, Song Chaoming has not visited his old friend for a long time.

He only learned of Chen Hui's true identity after Song Chaoming's paper was published. If he had known earlier, he would never have introduced him to Song Chaoming. Instead, he would have personally visited Song Chaoming three times to invite this important figure to his laboratory.

If that's the case, then wouldn't he be the collaborator for the next world-class major achievement?
He was genuinely jealous.

"Hey, Lao Liu, you're not right to say that. My old brother has never forgotten you. That's why I think of you as soon as something good happens."

Song Chaoming understood Liu Jishou's complicated feelings, but the two had been friends for many years, and he was also very grateful to Lao Liu. If it weren't for Lao Liu, he wouldn't have been able to invite Chen Hui.

So let alone the possibility of curing cancer now, we probably haven't even completed our own national key project yet.

"what's up?"

Liu Jishou said absentmindedly.

He was already in a bad mood, and seeing Song Chaoming made him even more emotional.

"Professor Chen has another project, and our lab is short-staffed. Would you be interested in joining us?"

Song Chaoming chuckled.

Startled awake from his deathbed, Liu Jishou, who had been sullen and depressed, sprang to his feet, his eyes wide like a fish as he stared at Song Chaoming. "Really?"

"of course it's true!"

"Hurry up and inform your doctoral students. Professor Chen is always decisive and efficient, so it's best to start the experiment as soon as possible."

Having worked with Chen Hui for so long, Song Chaoming understands Chen Hui's temperament. Overall, Chen Hui is a very good partner. He is highly skilled, doesn't cause any trouble, and doesn't even require others to be as diligent and hardworking as he is, as long as they are not deliberately lazy.

The only thing to be careful about is taking the research seriously.

This was the first time Song Chaoming had ever met such an industry leader. Not to mention others, even he himself couldn't help but feel a bit arrogant when collaborating with professors who were not as good as him.

"Old Song, I'm sorry, I misunderstood you before."

Liu Jishou became completely excited and couldn't wait to take out his phone and call his doctoral and master's students. "Ge Xin, quickly call your junior brothers and sisters to gather in Professor Song's lab."

"You have a maximum of fifteen minutes. If you can't get here, then you don't need to come back!"

He didn't even ask what Song Chaoming and Chen Hui's project was. No matter what the project was, as long as he could be of use, he would cooperate with Chen Hui without hesitation. If there was an opportunity to make money, why not seize it?

He's just not good at research, he's not stupid. "Come on, let's go to your lab right away."

Liu Jishou was eager to see Chen Hui first, fearing that something might go wrong or someone might steal his opportunity.

"So, how exactly do you plan to cooperate?"

"What do we need to do?"

On the way to the laboratory, it was only then that Liu Jishou began to inquire about the specific details.

"It's very simple. Just do whatever experiments Professor Chen asks you to do."

Song Chaoming said with a smile, thinking about his collaboration with Chen Hui, there really couldn't be a more relaxed scientific research in the world, and he was still confident in his old friend's experimental skills.

"And what about you guys?" Liu Jishou asked curiously.

"We have more important projects to do, and we really can't spare any manpower. Otherwise, would you have gotten such a good opportunity?"

"What? So, you mean I'm collaborating with Professor Chen on this project alone?"

Liu Jishou's cheeks flushed with excitement. He had originally thought he could get a third or fourth authorship, but he didn't expect to be a second author!

Song Chaoming smiled without saying a word, of course he knew what his old friend was happy about, but this was a decision he had made after careful consideration.

Compared to Nirvana No. 1, which can completely cure cancer, he was not optimistic about Chen Hui's new discovery.

That's how scientific research is, especially in biomedicine. Often, a phenomenon seems to point in a promising direction, but after months or even years of verification, it turns out that it may have been an error caused by magnetic field interference or other reasons with the measuring instrument at the time.

He even felt that there were some problems with the data Chen Hui had summarized, because the conclusions were too alarming.

Prolonging life?

Throughout history, countless monarchs and emperors have spent countless human and material resources, yet none of them have ever succeeded.
Song Chaoming himself studied biomedicine, and he even believed that the concept of life extension was impossible.

Of course, when he talks about extending lifespan, he is referring to the methods that Chen Hui has researched to truly prolong life, not to treating diseases. Even treating cancer only returns the lifespan that originally belonged to the patient, not extends it.

He believes that everyone's lifespan is predetermined, just like the little games they often play. Everyone starts with a thousand chips, but the chips for lifespan can only decrease, not increase. Even curing cancer only reduces this decrease.

He believes that everyone's initial lifespan may be 150 years, but due to staying up late or getting sick, this number will continue to decrease. So some people can live to be seventy or eighty, some people can live to be over a hundred, but no one can live to be more than 150.

The discovery Chen Hui just mentioned was to extend everyone's initial stake, turning 150 into 200 or even more, which Song Chaoming considered impossible.

So he simply left it all to Liu Jishou to do, and didn't get involved.

He believed that with Professor Chen's abilities, even if the initial guess was wrong, he might still be able to research something useful, so that his old friend wouldn't have wasted his time. He had that much confidence in Chen Hui.

Both had their own thoughts, but they were very satisfied. They rode briskly and arrived at the laboratory in no time.

"Professor Chen."

When Liu Jishou saw Chen Hui again, his face was full of smiles. "I was blind before, I never expected Professor Chen to come to our Huaxia Academy of Medical Sciences." "Professor Liu."

Chen Hui nodded, roughly understanding why Song Chaoming had agreed so readily. It was a case of keeping the benefits within the family. However, he didn't mind, as long as someone could help him with the experiments.

These days, Chen Hui has already learned to conduct experiments himself, so he can certainly do research on his own. However, individual strength is limited. If he had researched Nirvana No. 1 on his own before, he might have succeeded, but whether it would take three or five years is hard to say. Nobody knows if his uncle Li Tianhua can last that long.

Having tasted success, Chen Hui naturally chose to collaborate with others.

Soon, Liu Jishou's students also arrived.

Not everyone came. One doctoral student was not at the school, and two master's students could not be contacted. But looking at the three doctoral students and five master's students in front of us, it was enough.

When Ge Xin learned that he was going to collaborate with Chen Hui on a project, his eyes lit up.

A year ago, with Chen Hui's help, he successfully completed his doctoral dissertation. With graduation defense just a few months away, he did not plan to continue working with his professor. It wasn't that he didn't want to, but mainly because Liu Jishou did not have any postdoctoral positions available, and he didn't even have any decent projects. Recruiting postdoctoral fellows would be misleading students.

He never expected to be able to participate in Professor Chen's project before graduation; he felt that he must have been blessed by Lady Luck.

The other students were also incredibly excited, showing no signs of impatience at being called over from their vacation. Instead, they were eager to join Chen Shen in a big battle.

In the conference room, Chen Hui began to explain his findings to Liu Jishou and the others, and then explained his experimental design ideas.

"Extend life?"

Liu Jishou was stunned and felt a very strong sense of disconnect.

I feel like I've suddenly traveled to several decades in the future. Is this a topic that we should be researching in this era?
By this time, he also learned about the research topic that Song Chaoming and his team were studying: to completely cure cancer!
Liu Jishou didn't know what to say. He wanted to say that Song Chaoming and his group were too arrogant, but their project had already entered the clinical trial stage. Even if there were any problems in the end, after some adjustments, it would only take a few more years. There was a high probability that cancer would no longer be a terminal illness in the future.

He had the same feeling as a child from a mountain village visiting a big city for the first time: has technology really developed to this extent?

He roughly understood why Song Chaoming had completely handed over the project to him. As for cancer, it was almost certain to be cured, but the idea of ​​prolonging life sounded very unreliable. Otherwise, Song Chaoming would have at least arranged for a few people to come in, to become second or third-tier employees or something.

Compared to Song Chaoming, he was even more of a loner. Although he also felt that the topic sounded a bit far-fetched, the data provided by Professor Chen was indeed correct, so he just followed Professor Chen's lead.

He did whatever Chen Hui told him to do.

The other students were fearless and unafraid. Even if Chen Hui claimed to have developed a superhuman potion, they would probably follow him without hesitation and with great enthusiasm, let alone talk about extending lifespan.

The experimental plan was finalized a few hours later.

Liu Jishou rushed back to make arrangements. Although his laboratory equipment was not as advanced as Song Chaoming's, Chen Hui had already found a breakthrough through data this time. All that was needed was verification, not experimentation to discover anything. His equipment was more than enough.

He had previously studied biological enzymes and did not have enough materials on cancer. He couldn't even wait to purchase them, so he took some directly from Song Chaoming's laboratory and borrowed some from other laboratories. He started experimental verification as soon as he returned to his laboratory.

Soon, with the cooperation of Liu Jishou's doctoral students, Chen Hui conducted three more organoid experiments and used his connections to apply to Qian Xuesen for the more expensive and precise third-generation single-cell sequencing technology.

As a result, the signals that Chen Hui had found in the previous data still existed, and the patterns were highly consistent, ruling out random errors.

This result was a great encouragement to everyone in Liu Jishou's laboratory; at least, it was a good start!

Having not experienced previous failures, and being only mid-level PhD and Master's students, they were willing to risk everything to bring down the emperor, showing no scruples whatsoever. Unlike the timid and hesitant members of the Song Dynasty Ming Laboratory, they were bold, daring, and fearless.

However, they must consider that the demethylation of this epigenetic locus is known to be weakly associated with cell rejuvenation under certain stress, but has never been observed in such a large-scale and regular context.

Was this caused by Nirvana-1?

Or is it the chaos before a cell dies?

Chen Hui pulled up the real-time cell viability monitoring data, which showed that when the change occurred, the cell state was stable and not dying. His guess was correct!

Next came the more complicated controlled variable experiments. Chen Hui needed to find out which segment of the programming gene in Nirvana-1 was in effect.

While Liu Jishou's laboratory was making great strides in its research on longevity, Song Chaoming and his team were also making rapid progress in their clinical trials.

The atmosphere in the sterile laminar flow ward was somber.

A emaciated, late-stage lung cancer patient with difficulty breathing received his first intravenous infusion of Nirvana No. 1. The medical staff held their breath, and the indicators on the monitoring instruments remained stable.

There was no violent reaction as expected; the calm was unsettling.

His family members wait anxiously outside the ward every day.

This patient has entered the terminal stage. Not only is he suffering from lung cancer, but various complications have also ravaged him beyond recognition. If he cannot be cured, the doctor predicts that he will not live for more than half a month.

That's why when they learned that Song Chaoming's laboratory was recruiting volunteers, they contacted them immediately and readily signed the relevant documents for the clinical trial, so he naturally became one of the first participants.

As far as they know, there are more than a dozen volunteers who hesitated and signed the volunteer forms a few days late, so they can only wait for the next batch of experiments.

But they knew that this was only a small group of people, and many of them wouldn't even live to see the start of the next batch of experiments.

They were relieved but also full of worries. What about them?

Can they hold out until that day?

Daily PET-CT scans and blood biopsies have become routine.

On the third day, the doctor in charge of imaging suddenly leaned close to the screen, rubbed his eyes in disbelief, and the glaring bright spots on the screen that represented active cancer cells seemed to have dimmed a little.

He initially thought it was a machine error, but he carefully recorded all the changes and data.

By the fifth day, the shrinking of the bright spots was undeniable.

On the seventh day, a graph showing a precipitous drop in tumor marker indices was printed out and handed to the family members who had been waiting outside the ICU, eliciting gasps of surprise.

The patient's parents and wife couldn't help but cry tears of joy, sobbing uncontrollably in the corridor. However, looking at the still emaciated patient in the ward, they couldn't help but worry.

(End of this chapter)