Chapter 47: A-Bio (2)
On Friday morning, Carpentier, a professor at Caltech, was reading the Science journal.
“Ryu Young-Joon...”
It was the young man who had left a strong impression of himself on the scientific community with his shocking interview after being on the cover page of Science. It hadn’t been long since that happened, but he swept the journal again.
This time, it was a paper about his success in glaucoma clinical trials, but even that huge incident was on the second page. Shockingly, this young, genius scientist published two papers at once in a journal like Science.
‘He put induced pluripotent stem cells and cell differentiation in one publication as well...’
Aside from the fact that his research speed was unreal, his results were just shocking.
The paper that was on the front page was an Alzheimer’s cure. It was filled with the data they obtained from animal experiments, and he had written about how clinical trials were beginning in the discussion.
Carpentier remembered what Young-Joon said during his CNN interview: he had said that he was going to soon erase neurological disorders from the history of humanity. When he first heard it, he dismissed it as just gossip and laughed it off with other professors during the luncheon meeting, saying that there was a new oddball genius in the community.
But now, Carpentier understood that Young-Joon’s statement was not just out of youthful passion and confidence; he actually showed the potential to accomplish something that great. With his skills and research speed, he might just be able to do it, perhaps even more.
The Science journal provided job opportunities in the Careers section. In the headline job section, there was a listing for a company named A-Bio. Carpentier pressed it because the person in charge was Young-Joon, and he saw that it was actually his company. It was a start-up company that had launched as one of A-Gen’s affiliates.
[At A-Bio, we are looking for the greatest scientists.]
After reading the job listing, Carpentier thought for a while as he stroked his beard. He had lived his entire life as a single man. People said he was homosexual or asexual and all kinds of other things, but there was a different answer.
When he was in graduate school, there was a woman he was going to marry. She was an international student named Lila. She liked swimming and jogging, chugged her beer, and liked to go on drives while blasting the music. She was outgoing and fun, and she was the complete opposite of Carpentier, who was timid.
That was why his sadness was worse when she got in a car accident and got locked-in syndrome. It was more of a curse than a disorder. If there was such a thing as punishment in hell, this would have been it.
Lila had a conscience, and she could move her right eye; that was it. Locked-in syndrome was a disorder that locked up someone in their own body for life due to all their nerves dying.
The words she made out by blinking yes or no when Carpentier pointed at letters of the alphabet was “Kill me”. Perhaps, Lila was someone they had to let go of, but no one had the courage to, and there were a lot of people who wanted to hold onto her as she was a lovely person who always spread her optimistic energy to everyone around her.
From then on, Carpentier swore to dedicate the rest of his life on stem cells and regenerative medicine.
“...”
After entering his sixties, more oftenly, he began to think about meeting Lila after he died. He still couldn’t face her. He received a Nobel Prize, but it wasn’t enough.
‘But this man... If it’s Ryu Young-Joon...’
Click.
Carpentier clicked the button to apply right below the listing.
* * *
“I’m here.”
Jacob landed in Incheon after a ten-hour flight. Then, he traveled another hour and a half to get to the A-Bio lab.
“Phew.”
On the way to the waiting room, Jacob was full of confidence. Jacob, who had just turned thirty, was confident that he was in the top 0.1 percent of his age group in the entire human population in terms of his academic career. He had gotten a scholarship with overwhelmingly high grades at Caltech majoring in biological engineering, where the smartest people in the world were gathered, and even graduated early. After that, he published a paper that was cited over three hundred times while working on his doctorate in a Nobel Prize recipient’s lab. Some universities sent him offers for post-doctoral research, guaranteeing him a professor position.
Jacob, who had a guaranteed future, had come all the way to South Korea, and he was entering a small start-up company, an affiliate of A-Gen. Adults who didn’t know any better stopped him, asking him what he was doing, but Jacob was confident in his decision.
A-Bio was a company that could change the trend of the pharmaceutical industry. It wasn’t dirty like existing pharmaceutical companies since it was new, and it could dominate the sector of the market existing companies didn’t have as A-Bio was based on stem cell technology and regenerative medicine.
It would be nice to be a professor at Harvard, but Jacob wanted to participate as a start-up member of an important company like this and create products that would directly help humanity.
‘I’ll only be able to make choices like this when I’m young. How am I going to think about getting a job at a venture company in Asia that’s ten hours away by plane after I become a professor?’
Jacob was very satisfied in his ambitious decision.
Creak.
He opened the door.
The first person that caught his eye was Carpentier, who was drinking a coffee from Ediya Coffee.[1] Jacob could see some familiar faces. His chest, which was puffed up in pride, had deflated in a second.
‘What is this?’
He felt like was at a conference. He could recognize a few famous people in the academic society.
“Professor Carpentier...?” Jacob approached him and said. He felt like he was dreaming.
‘I take back what I said about not being able to make a bold decision like this after becoming a professor.’
“You came to apply as well?” Carpentier asked with a chuckle.
“... Why would you...? You have tenure as well...”
Tenure was a system that guaranteed the professor a job at that institution for life. That aside, he was a Nobel Prize winner; he would have a rich and prestigious life just by giving lectures, so why?
“There is a wish I want to achieve before I die. It might be possible at this company.”
Carpentier smiled with excitement.
“Carpentier!”
Suddenly, someone shouted from behind like they were happy to see him. When Jacob turned around, he could see Feng Zheng, a professor of life sciences who worked in a lab in MIT’s medical department. After writing the paper that was on the cover of Nature at thirty-five, he had published twenty papers in Nature and their sister journals until now. He was a Nobel Prize candidate and one of the stars of academic society.
Jacob was shocked.
‘Even he applied? Wait a minute. He’s in cancer research, isn’t he?’
It was puzzling why he even applied to a regenerative medicine company, but it didn’t matter if one was someone like Feng Zheng. He was someone who could create a new anticancer pipeline that didn’t previously exist at this company and secure a position. CEOs who said that they didn’t do anticancer drugs would begin to do it if Feng Zheng said he was coming.
‘Wait.’
Feng Zheng, Carpentier, and all those other people.
‘... Shit. What if I don’t get in?’
A completely unexpected feeling of anxiety was in Jacob’s heart.
“You want to apply to this company too, Professor Zheng?” Carpentier asked Feng Zheng.
“Originally, I came here because I was curious about what kind of person Doctor Ryu was. But I heard something shocking during my interview, and now I want to work here.”
“Something shocking?”
“It seems that Doctor Ryu is thinking of developing a cure for pancreatic cancer.”
“What?!” Jacob screamed.
All the scientists around them turned around to face Feng Zheng.
“Well, I don’t know the details either,” Feng Zheng said. “He said that he hasn’t done any experiments yet as he is still just sketching out the idea. He didn’t reveal the details, though. But he said that he was going to erase pancreatic cancer from human history soon.”
“Pancreatic cancer?”
The crowd of scientists began murmuring quickly.
“Normally, I would think it’s nonsense without any data, but honestly, I’m looking forward to it seeing that it was Doctor Ryu who said it,” Carpentier said.
“Wait. Professor Zheng, are you saying that A-Bio is going to do anticancer drugs as well?” Jacob interfered and asked.
“That’s right.”
“What is...”
“Since Doctor Ryu had originally studied cancer, he probably had an interest in anticancer as well. And that’s the reason why I came all the way here.”
Click.
A Hispanic woman in her mid-thirties came out from the interview room. Her name was Felicida, and she was a pretty famous scientist. She worked in Carpentier’s lab, and she was very interested in regenerative medicine and health care.
“Doctor Ryu said that he’s going to do health care,” Felicida said to Carpentier. He nodded.
“If he does stem cells, he could probably connect it to health care. Something like skin improvement with skin regeneration...” Carpentier said.
“No, not anything like that. Actual health care. He said that he’s going to do probiotics. It seems like he already has a lot of progress.”
“Do what?” Jacob asked in disbelief.
Hadn’t he already made something huge, like an Alzheimer’s cure, based on stem cell technology? But he was doing probiotics and anticancer, which were completely different things, rather than working on a stem cell pipeline?
‘What kind of company is this?’
“An Alzheimer’s and glaucoma cure for the stem cell pipeline, a pancreatic cancer cure for the anticancer pipeline. Considering this, the probiotic is probably something else, too. Did you hear anything?” Carpentier asked.
Felicida shrugged and shook her head. “But he said that there would be some excellent effects on a major disease. He said that was why he brought it from A-Gen. It’s probably something important.”
“...”
If he said it was a major illness, it would probably be on the same level as pancreatic cancer and Alzheimer’s. What kind of probiotics was it that it was as effective as a cure?
Then, someone came out from the interview room and called on Jacob, who was spacing out.
“Jacob, come on in.”
Extremely nervous, Jacob went into the interview room. There was a pale, neat-looking, tired man sitting inside. It was Doctor Young-Joon. To Jacob, it seemed like Asians never got old; he even looked younger than Jacob.
Beside Young-Joon, a few other scientists were reading Jacob’s resume.
“Hello, Jacob. I read your paper. The one in Nature,” Young-Joon said.
Jacob gulped. He was even more nervous than when he was defending his thesis.
“I’m very glad that a talented scientist like you applied to our company. Normally, we would have to hear about your research through a seminar, but we are going to substitute it with your paper and the report on your CV.”
“Yes...”
“Jacob, why do you want to join A-Bio? I assume you have a special determination to join a start-up company in a country so far away.”
Jacob gulped.
“I wanted to go into a pharmaceutical company and develop a drug myself. Not basic research that universities do. But I didn’t want to go to a large, transnational pharmaceutical company because most of them are all corrupt,” Jacob said.
“Then, I heard that you started this company and I applied. It would grow fast since it has a strong base technology, and I thought that it wouldn’t be dirty because it’s new. I also heard that A-Gen, your mother company, kept their research ethics and was fair to you.”
The last part was a little different, but Jacob’s answer satisfied Young-Joon. He nodded.
“What kind of research do you want to do here?”
“Honestly, I thought that I would be able to contribute a lot in differentiating stem cells to nerves since I studied cell signaling mechanisms.”
Then, without confidence, Jacob added, “To be honest, I was pretty recognized for my talent. So, I thought that if I came here, I would become good partners with you and grow this company into a bigger one.”
“But you don’t think so now?”
“I think the company will grow well, but I am not sure if there will be room for me to contribute. Professor Carpentier and Professor Zheng are out there, too...”
Young-Joon chuckled.
“They are outstanding people, but you shouldn’t be intimidated by authority or fame.” Young-Joon added, “The research we are doing is cutting-edge. We are exploring outside known human knowledge, where no one has the answer to.”
“...”
“I think that the creativity of young scientists could shine brighter than the experience of Nobel Prize winners. Have confidence.”
* * *
The news of A-Bio’s launching swept the nation.
[Carpentier, Nobel Prize recipient, joins A-Bio.]
[Professor Feng Zheng of MIT joins A-Bio.]
[What is A-Bio, a biology and pharmaceutical company?]
Nicholas read the news articles that were flowing in with interest. The reactions that were coming up on Twitter were interesting as well.
—I heard that Avengers are getting released. Is it this?
—What if Carpentier has to work late at night like the Hell Korea is and goes home crying?
—God-Young-Joon is not someone who would do that.
—It seems like his entire schedule is a block looking at the time it took him to develop the glaucoma cure.
—I’m sorry, but I want him to develop a cure even if he goes through hell. My mom has Alzheimer’s and our entire family is suffering.
—He said the Alzheimer’s cure is going into clinical trials. Wait for it.
—But does Carpentier have anything to do even if he comes? I heard that Doctor Ryu planned all the experiments for iPSCs, Alzheimer’s, or glaucoma.
—They’ll probably divide their research project and give it to people. If it was Alzheimer’s after glaucoma, it will be together this time.
—A Korean venture company that orders around a Nobel Prize winner. This is insane!
—I can feel the national pride rising... Get me some more![2]
“Carpentier or Feng Zheng... I’m jealous of them,” Nicholas said quietly as he closed his computer.
To be frank, Nicholas would jump out of his chair and join A-Bio if it wasn’t for his title of CTO. He just thought of Young-Joon as a young man with a promising future at the year-end seminar, but it was way past that now.
Nicholas looked over the last Alzheimer’s clinical trial report he was given. It was data that they had gathered appropriate trial patients and that they were dedifferentiating stem cells from patient somatic cells.
If he calculated the time right, the Alzheimer’s cure that Young-Joon made would be administered to the patient next Monday.
1. Ediya Coffee is a coffeehouse chain based in South Korea. ?
2. This is a meme in Korea for national pride, or gookbbong. The more literal translation is, “I can feel it... Madam, get me some more!” As national pride makes people feel good, it is compared to alcohol, thus asking the madam, or the server, to get them more. ?
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