godfather of surgery

Chapter 1245 Breakthrough
Li Gaoyang, the head of BG—a global biopharmaceutical giant—is currently sitting in his office on the top floor of a skyscraper, overlooking the bustling city below.

His fingers tapped unconsciously on the table. In front of him was the latest intelligence provided by Rolf, which he had already read several times.

“Eighty million US dollars… a new type of immune adjuvant… a protein enhancer designed from scratch…” he murmured to himself, each word like a needle gently pricking his sensitive nerves.

Others might see this as an unrealistic fantasy, but Li Gaoyang wouldn't.

He deeply understood that Yang Ping had created more than one miracle, such as the space-guided theory and muscle cloning technology—that was not just a technological breakthrough, but also a disruptive way of thinking and an ability to turn ideas into reality at an astonishing speed.

BG's scientists had discussed the space-oriented theory before, and they all agreed that it was nothing but wishful thinking. But what is the truth? He cannot make the same mistake; contempt and arrogance are the greatest dangers.

“We can’t let him do it…” Li Gaoyang’s eyes turned sharp and cold.

He has now assumed that Yang Ping's project is successful, and all decisions are based on this assumption.

Li Gaoyang believes that BG's dominant position in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology field cannot be shaken by anyone. The vaccine sector has a huge market, and BG Group's subsidiaries hold a significant market share and patent barriers in traditional vaccines and adjuvants. A truly efficient, safe, and programmable new adjuvant will directly shake their foundation. This is not just commercial competition; it is a threat to their survival.

He picked up the encrypted phone and dialed the numbers of several "old friends." These CEOs controlled the world's top laboratory equipment, high-end enzyme preparations and reagents, and the supply of specialty chemical materials. Their companies collectively formed the "infrastructure" of modern life science research.

These companies all hold shares in BG Corporation to varying degrees, forming an interconnected, invisible pharmaceutical and biotechnology empire.

“Harris, it’s me, Rigoyan. I want your company to restrict the flow of high-end laboratory equipment to the Sanbo Research Institute in China, and to monitor certain equipment currently operating in China 24 hours a day. I will have my secretary send you a list, and all operations listed on the list must be strictly prohibited.”

"Mr. Smith, I need to take up a little of your time..."

“Philip, I need your cooperation. Some unconventional, customized reagents and consumables, especially core materials involved in protein linkage and directed evolution, I hope will not be open to any laboratory in China for the time being. I will send you the list as soon as possible.”

After finishing the call, he immediately pulled out a piece of paper, made a list, checked and verified the list, and then called his secretary in.

"We need to schedule an important meeting between the presidents of these companies here. Top secret! Urgent!"

The secretary immediately put away the paper and went to make arrangements.

There were no explicit threats, no written bans, only tacit "business decisions" and "business adjustments." An invisible "soft blockade" targeting Yang Ping's research group was quietly woven together amidst casual conversation.

……

"Senior Brother Jiang, when will my enzymes arrive?" Liu Yang asked. He needed special restriction endonucleases and ligases for high-throughput cloning.
Immediately afterwards, Chu Xiaoxiao also came over with a bitter face and asked, "How is that Swiss company's flow cytometer special detection panel? When will it be shipped?"

Wang Chao had his eye on a device for rapid detection of trace protein interactions.

He Zijian adjusted his glasses and calmly added, "Several software programs I need for protein structure simulation suddenly got stuck."

Jiang Jitong's face was very grim. He said in a very regretful tone, "I have already asked the purchasing department. All the items we need are stuck for various reasons, which means they won't arrive. We don't know when they will arrive."

How could this be?
As if overnight, they went from being "resource-rich" pay-to-win players to "unlucky" players who kept hitting walls everywhere.

Jiang Jitong frowned, his expression grave.

“It’s not a coincidence.” He said in a deep voice to the group of people who had gathered around him, “I asked a few supplier friends with whom I have a good relationship, and they hinted that someone had ‘made a call’ and didn’t want certain core materials to reach us so quickly. The reasons, of course, were high-sounding, such as ‘strategic material control’ and ‘technical risk assessment’.”

"Is someone setting us up?" Liu Yang immediately realized.

"It's pretty close to the truth," Jiang Jitong nodded.

"Shameless!" Chu Xiaoxiao stomped her foot in anger. "Does business competition justify such underhanded tactics? Cutting off our research supplies?"

“This is commercial warfare, bloodless, but equally deadly,” He Zijian analyzed. “They don’t need to completely stop us, they just need to delay our progress. Time cost is one of the biggest costs for scientific research. If it drags on for a year or two, our first-mover advantage may be completely lost, and even the morale of the team may be dragged down.”

Wang Chao slammed his fist on the table: "Then what do we do? Just wait here? Or go and beg them?"

“Begging is useless,” Jiang Jitong shook his head. “They’d love for us to back down. We must tell the professor about this immediately.”

...After listening to Jiang Jitong's report, Yang Ping didn't show much surprise on his face, as if he had expected this to happen. He even smiled and took a sip of tea from his thermos.

"You reacted pretty quickly. It seems our approach really hit their sore spot. I admire their excellent quality of learning from their mistakes." Yang Ping's tone even carried a hint of admiration.

"Professor, how can you still laugh?" Chu Xiaoxiao was almost crying with anxiety. "Without those enzymes and reagents, Liu Yang's platform couldn't be built; without a specific detection panel, my risk assessment model is just a castle in the air; without computing resources, He Zijian's design optimization is as slow as a snail... Our project is about to die in the womb!"

"Still in the womb? That's an exaggeration." Yang Ping put down his thermos and glanced at the young and anxious faces in front of him. "What they blocked was the 'best' and 'most convenient' path, the 'main road' that was right in front of everyone. But when it comes to scientific research, especially when you want to do something different, you can't just take the main road. Sometimes, you have to take some 'unorthodox' approaches."

"Unorthodox methods?" Everyone was stunned.

“That’s right.” Yang Ping stood up, walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, and said, “If they won’t sell us ready-made ‘bullets,’ we’ll make them ourselves, or find alternatives, or even think differently and shoot down birds with a slingshot instead of a gun.”

As he spoke, he wrote and drew on the whiteboard:
"First, the substitution and self-development of core reagents."

“Liu Yang, high-throughput cloning isn’t limited to the Golden Gate method. Can we optimize the conditions of traditional Gibson assembly, SLiCE assembly, and even older enzyme digestion and ligation, and use more common enzymes? Or, can we express and purify some key enzymes ourselves? Does the institute have any relevant strains and vectors? Go find them! Go ask! Go collaborate with other enzyme research groups in the institute! Tang Shun has a list of all the research directions of all the research groups.”

“Jiang Jitong, you are in charge of researching whether there are any alternative suppliers in China, or whether any laboratories have stockpiles that we can exchange with other resources. If that doesn’t work, see if it’s possible to go through ‘non-standard’ channels, such as some small startups, or some non-mainstream overseas suppliers, who may not be affected by large companies.”

"Second, equipment modification and functional exploration."

“Wang Chao, we can’t buy that protein interaction detection device. Can we use the old machine on the institute’s public platform? Its detection limit might not be low enough, but what if we optimize the sample processing flow and amplify the signal? Or, are there any other techniques that can indirectly characterize the interaction? For example, an older model of surface plasmon resonance (SPR)? Fluorescence polarization (FP)? Try to get close to the teachers in charge of the platform and see if they can give us some access to adjust some underlying parameters so we can optimize the method ourselves.”

"Chu Xiaoxiao, if the flow cytometry panel is blocked, then we'll use the most basic antibodies to create our own! It'll just be a bit more troublesome, requiring more compensation optimization and condition exploration. List the antibody targets you need, and we'll order them separately from different companies, breaking it down into smaller parts. If that doesn't work, for certain key tests, we can send them out to Europe or the United States to be done. They can't block themselves, can they? I can practice if needed."

"Third, computing resources."

"He Zijian, commercial computing software is limited. You can contact the Digital Medicine Laboratory of Nandu Medical University to explore ways to use these software. Directly using Nandu Medical University's artificial intelligence might be more effective."

Yang Ping analyzed each point clearly, with well-defined strategies, as if he already had a plan in mind. He not only pointed out the problems but also provided a set of combined solutions on how to "circumvent" them, "find loopholes," and "take matters into one's own hands."

“Remember,” Yang Ping concluded sharply, “the barriers they build seem solid, but they are often rigid, bloated, and slow to react to changes. We, on the other hand, are small, fast, and agile. They haven’t completely blocked all paths, nor can they. That’s our opportunity. Ruixing is also working hard on these basic experimental equipment and reagents, but these things can’t be solved overnight. It’s impossible to produce a product in less than five or ten years.”

Yang Ping's words were like a strong wind, dispelling the gloom that had hung over the team. The group, who had felt they had reached a dead end, had their eyes light up again.

Exactly! Why must we use the best? Why must we take the easiest route? Isn't the essence of scientific research about solving one "impossible" problem after another?

……

In the days that followed, the research team underwent a dramatic change in style, transforming from an "elite force" pursuing cutting-edge efficiency into a "homemade steelmaking" team full of grassroots wisdom.

Liu Yang immersed himself in the institute's strain preservation center and protein purification platform, beginning his attempts to express and optimize several key recombinant enzymes. The process was fraught with difficulties; the purity and activity couldn't compare to commercial products, but he enjoyed it immensely, often reeking of culture medium. He even found a method in an old paper to simulate specific cloning effects using a combination of common endonucleases and ligases. Although the steps were cumbersome and inefficient, it at least allowed his vector construction work to continue.

Chu Xiaoxiao became a "stubborn resident" of the flow cytometry platform. She persistently begged and pleaded, eventually befriending the platform administrator and gaining the privilege of "tinkering" with the old instrument during off-peak hours. Using only the most basic antibodies, she configured the detection panel herself, like building blocks, repeatedly adjusting voltage and compensation, recording massive amounts of data. This process was painful and lengthy, but it deepened her understanding of flow cytometry technology to the core.

He Zijian went to the Digital Medicine Center of Nandu Medical University every day to communicate with the engineers and discuss how to use larger models with stronger computing power to complete his work.

Wang Chao, displaying his "hands-on" talent, took Jiang Jitong to the School of Electronic Engineering and the School of Mechanical Engineering at the university for "help" to see if they could build a simple protein interaction detection device themselves. Although the final product looked like a "ragtag mess" (in Wang Chao's words), pieced together from various discarded optical components and a homemade sample cell, with a disappointing signal-to-noise ratio, it actually managed to detect some trending results, providing them with a preliminary screening basis.

Jiang Jitong was the team's "logistics minister" and "diplomat." He used all his connections to find a substitute for a key chemical reagent from a little-known small biotechnology company in China; through alumni connections, he "borrowed" a batch of urgently needed rare enzyme preparations from a research institute in another city; and he even contacted a small research institute in Europe, which was very interested in Yang Ping's project and was willing to provide some assistance in the form of technical exchanges.

This sudden lockdown did not break the five-person team; instead, it unleashed their boundless potential and creativity. They seemed to have returned to the "pioneering era" of scientific exploration, creating their own tools when none existed and forging their own paths when none were paved.

In this process, their understanding of the technologies they researched deepened in unexpected ways. Optimizing enzymes themselves gave them a better understanding of the bottlenecks in enzymatic reactions; configuring flow cytometry panels themselves gave them a better understanding of the characteristics of antibodies and markers; building detection devices themselves gave them a better understanding of the principles of signal detection and interfering factors…

This is perhaps the value of what Yang Ping calls "unorthodox methods"—it forces you to return to the root of the problem and use the most basic knowledge and the most primitive tools to solve the most cutting-edge issues.

Dean Xia also heard about the "difficulties" the research group had encountered. He "passed by" the office again, and this time he didn't beat around the bush but directly expressed his concern: "Professor Yang, I heard you've run into some trouble with procurement? Should I report this to the higher-ups and step in to coordinate?"

Yang Ping smiled and pointed to the five young people who were busy working, saying, "Dean, don't worry. Look, they are undergoing comprehensive 'scientific research survival training.' This little difficulty is good for them to practice. Sometimes, if things go too smoothly, it won't cultivate scientists who can truly fight tough battles."

Dean Xia looked at the bustling, even somewhat chaotic, scene in the office, and at the indomitable glint in the eyes of the young people, and nodded with a hint of skepticism. He seemed to understand what Yang Ping meant by "not understanding scientific research"—he was used to following the established framework and ample resources step by step, while Yang Ping seemed to be better at forging new paths amidst constraints and difficulties.