Chapter 52: A-Bio (7)
Song Ji-Hyun, who worked at Celligener, was on the first floor of A-Bio. Thinking about it now, it was like a dream that Young-Joon treated her dog, Brownie, and they had a drink together in return. It felt like a guy she knew from the neighborhood who was good at dancing debuted and became Michael Jackson in just a few weeks. Song Ji-Hyun just thought of him as a unique and talented scientist, but one day, his paper and interview were published in Science. And then, he became super famous in a few months by appearing everywhere on the news, and now, he was the CEO of a company named A-Bio.
‘I have a personal connection with someone like that?’
No matter how Song Ji-Hyun thought about it, she couldn’t believe it. She had Young-Joon’s number on her phone, but she didn’t have the courage to call him even out of curiosity. So, instead of calling him and asking him for directions, she was wandering on the first floor of A-Bio alone. She couldn’t find the elevator.
“Hello.”
Choi Myung-Joon and Seo Yoon-Ju, who ran into her by chance, greeted her.
“Hello,” Song Ji-Hyuk replied.
“I haven’t seen you around. Are you Doctor Song Ji-Hyun?” Choi Myung-Joon asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Choi Myung-Joon. I am responsible for probiotics at A-Bio.”
“Nice to meet you.”
They shook hands.
“Let’s head over to the conference room.”
There was a probiotics meeting scheduled today. It was to share their results and check the direction of the progress. Song Ji-Hyun attended the meeting as Celligener’s representative.
The three of them went to the conference room on the second floor together. Inside, Young-Joon was waiting for them. With the beam projector on, he was putting out beverages and chocolate and setting up for the meeting.
“Ack! Sir, I will do it!”
Choi Myung-Joon ran toward him in shock and took the snacks away from him.
“Oh, it’s fine... Haha, thank you.”
“Sir, why don’t you hire a secretary? You can get your employees to do this...”
“I’ll consider it when the company gets bigger. I have no problem managing my schedule by myself right now.”
Young-Joon walked over to the front of the computer.
“Doctor Song, did you send the files for the meeting by email?”
“Yes.”
“The wireless connection in the conference room isn’t good, so I'll download it to a USB from my office. Wait here.”
“Here. I brought it on a USB as well just in case.”
Song Ji-Hyun handed him a USB.
“Thank you.”
As Young-Joon was plugged in the USB and opening the file, Song Ji-Hyun, who was watching him, talked to him.
“Double-coating the capsule worked.”
“Really? That’s good.”
“It worked when we did it according to what you told us, Doctor Ryu... I mean, sir.”
“Just call me Doctor Ryu.”
“...”
“Oh right, Doctor Song,” Young-Joon called.
“Yes?”
“There are two things I want to work with Celligener on.”
“Two?”
“One of them is developing a coating technology for a pancreatic cancer treatment. I’ll provide a sketch of the basic concept of it. Celliener should be able to do it quickly since you have a lot of experience with developing capsule coating technologies and you have a lot of equipment. I can’t give you royalties, but I will provide compensation for it.”
“Thank you. I’ll talk to the CEO about it. What’s the other one?”
Young-Joon grinned.
“What do you think it is?”
“...”
Song Ji-Hyuk tilted her head with a puzzled look on her face.
“What is it?”
“It’s the development of Cellicure, an early liver cancer treatment.”
Song Ji-Hyun’s eyes widened slowly.
“Cellicure?”
“I brought it with me when A-Bio left A-Gen. Let’s work on it again.”
Song Ji-Hyun asked again as if she couldn’t believe it.
“You brought Cellicure with you?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t Lab One of A-Gen have it?”
“A-Bio got the development and patent rights of Cellicure. We’re going to continue it from phase two of clinical trials.”
“...”
“This is the right thing to do. A more advanced drug shouldn’t disappear like that. If you want, we can let Celligener participate in the development process. And we will provide compensation as well. What do you think?”
“We would absolutely want to do it if you let us. It was the first drug we developed, so it means a lot to us.”
“Good. We’ll set up a meeting with your CEO next time.”
“We’re ready, sir!” Choi Myung-Joon said after putting up the slide about the progress of the development of probiotics on the screen.
“Thank you. I only have an hour for the meeting since I have to head to Incheon Airport right away to go to a conference in America,” Young-Joon said as he sat down.
“You’re going to a conference?” Song Ji-Hyun asked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“The International Integrative Brain Disorder Conference.”
“I’m going to a conference in the U.S. in two days. It’s a different one, though.”
“The IUBMB?”
“How did you know?”
“That’s the most famous one among the ones that are happening now. I’m going there after my conference, too.”
IUBMB stood for the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The reason that Celligener was going to IUBMB was because they were a venture company. It was where promising new technologies were promoted, international investments were given, and where people were recruited. It was the best place for new investors, job seekers, and venture companies who needed to meet other companies they could work with. Although, Young-Joon had a different goal.
“Shall we begin?” Choi Myung-Joon said.
“Yes.”
“First of all, we bought the strain you told us, Clorotonis limuvitus. And we also modified the genes you directed us to do. We confirmed ATak711, YJ2, mCAL by sequencing, overexpressed them by two hundred percent, and we also confirmed them by Western Blot.”
“I think I also asked you to check the expression level of Amuc and the vesicles. Did you do that by chance?”
Young-Joon didn’t tell anyone yet, but Amuc was a biomaterial secreted by bacteria that could cure type-2 diabetes. Vesicles were a small foamy membrane that the bacteria used to transport Amuc.
“It’s right here.”
Choi Myung-Joon went onto the next slide as if he was waiting for it. Pictures of the vesicles from Clorotonis limuvitus came up on the screen.
“This picture was taken by adding a fluorescent green tag to Amuc. As you can see, the vesicle is lighting up in green, meaning that Amuc is wrapped in the vesicle when it is secreted.”
Young-Joon smiled in satisfaction. Choi Myung-Joon went on.
“We used fluorescence flow cytometry and separated these vesicles into another tube. We purified it with FPLC and confirmed that it was Amuc.”
“Good work.”
“Sir, we did this because you ordered us to, but what does Amuc do?” Choi Myung-Joon asked.
He thought it would have some significant effect since Young-Joon was so obsessed with it, but he couldn’t predict what it would be.
“I guess I could tell you now since Attorney Lee Hae-Won and this project is confirmed to be A-Bio’s.”
Young-Joon went on.
“That material called Amuc is a cure for type-2 diabetes.”
Choi Myung-Joon almost dropped his laser pointer.
“This is... What? What is this?”
“Type-2 diabetes is a type of autoimmune disease. The Amuc protein will normalize the function of immune cells to suppress their response and decrease insulin resistance.”
“...”
“It will probably have therapeutic effects on diabetes even if we purify Amuc and inject it intravenously. But the best method is to establish Clorotonis limuvitus in the gut as the patients take probiotics. In my opinion, the most severe patients will also see results in four months at the most.”
“How did you figure this out?” Song Ji-Hyun asked like she couldn’t believe it.
“I got the idea while reading some papers.”
Choi Myung-Joon was a little confused.
“Then... Is this a drug? Or is it a health supplement?”
Usually, products that were made to prevent and treat diseases and had clear effects and side effects were usually called drugs. Products that had less of an effect but were safer due to less side effects were called health supplements; they didn’t target a specific disease and improved a large variety of functions in the body.
“It’s neither. It’s more effective than any diabetes treatment in the market right now, but it virtually has no side effects. It specifically targets diabetes, but it’s still probiotics, which improves a large variety of functions,” Young-Joon said.
Seo Yoon-Ju gulped.
‘So, he’s saying that this drug is out of this world...’
Choi Myung-Joon asked, “Then what are you going to create it as?”
“Let’s do both. Let’s put it out as a generic drug by purifying Amuc and as a health supplement by using live bacteria.”
“...”
“But I think it will be really hard to get approval from the MFDS.”[1]
Song Ji-Hyun added, “It’s not a GMO, but a LMO.”
GMOs were genetically modified organisms, but they were dead. For example, they were things like genetically modified corn powder.
However, LMO were living modified organisms. Not only were they heavily regulated, they had to start by obtaining approval for Clorotonis, a microorganism that wasn’t recognized by the MFDS.
“Even if we prove its safety, the MFDS will be very conservative on this because they are going to be afraid of taking responsibility if something goes wrong unexpectedly.:
“It’s alright. They will give us their approval.”
“Really?”
“There are three hundred million type-2 diabetes patients in the world. They will not be able to make three hundred million people suffer in pain because they’re scared and hesitant to give their approval when we’ve clearly shown its safety and efficacy,” Young-Joon said. He added, “And someone who is internationally renowned in this field has joined us. Doctor Felicida will join us as the principal scientist.”
“Alright.”
“We’re going to focus our company’s resources on this project for quite a while. Let’s take a look at the progress for the capsule coating technology.”
“Sure.”
Song Ji-Hyun opened her presentation files and reported their progress.
“... And so, we confirmed that the capsule coating safely transported the target material through the digestive organs into the gut through a mouse experiment done with the radiology team. We saw that the alginate hydrogel layered with chitosan had a positive effect as well.”
Young-Joon nodded his head.
“Good. I think you should have a meeting with Doctor Felicida next. I think I will be a bit busy even after returning from America. I will leave the basic set-up of Amuc to you.”
* * *
On Friday morning, a paper was published in Science. The name of the paper was [The Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease and Regeneration of the Brain Using Stem Cells.]
There were about fifteen authors: Young-Joon as the first and corresponding author, and Professor Shin Jung-Ju who conducted the clinical study as the second author. Other than them, scientists who participated in creating the stem cells and the doctors who took care of the patients were listed as authors in order of their contribution.
When someone clicked on the affiliation category, which showed where the author was affiliated with, Young-Joon’s company came up. It had changed from [A-Gen] to [A-Gen, A-Bio.]
A summary of the paper, which was edited by the editor in chief, Samuel, himself, made the front page of Science.
[In this paper, we created small stem cells, eight micrometers in diameter, by suppressing the expression of the AKKT gene, and we sent it to the brain by attaching a caverlin ligand to pass the blood brain barrier. Afterwards, we treated it with 3K3A-APC to differentiate the stem cells into neurons and regenerated the brain. We found that the brain size, cognitive ability, and problem solving of all eight patients who received this treatment recovered to normal levels, and there were no signs of side effects for five weeks.]
Even if there was a huge paper published in Science, it usually didn’t dominate the news on Naver. However, it differed by what kind of paper it was. For news like this, reporters who specialized in science had to release an article covering this paper. All of a sudden, it became huge.
[A-Bio conquers Alzheimer’s.]
[A world with no Alzheimer's is approaching.]
[The age where no brain diseases exist.]
[Dementia cured with stem cells.]
In just about an hour, forty news articles had been released. There were also some ridiculous articles among the sports news gossip.
[Stem cells can improve learning in students?!]
[Erectile dysfunction is treatable with stem cells! Give confidence to slouched men... <Read more>]
[Ryu Young-Joon, CEO of A-Bio, dating scandal with an actor, Miss S.]
It was just clickbait with no actual content. The only thing those articles wanted to do was attract more views as A-Bio and Ryu Young-Joon were keywords that guaranteed clicks.
“Are they insane? Who is Miss S? They are literally saying anything.”
Park Joo-Hyuk felt bewildered as he read the articles in the morning.
And later, in A-Bio’s office, all the company phones were ringing at once. Around ten employees were answering the phone, looking like their soul had been sucked out of their body.
“As nothing has been agreed upon yet...”
“I will deliver it to the CEO...”
They were repeating the same thing over and over again, like parrots.
Offers for investments and meetings were pouring in.
1. MFDS is the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. It is the FDA of Korea. ?
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