Doctor: I picked up attributes in the hospital

Chapter 241 Desperate Spinal Muscular Atrophy

"Wouldn't it cost eighty-nine million for a child with this disease to be cured thoroughly?"

Hearing what Ms. Liu said, Wei Wei was a little speechless, and at the same time she couldn't believe why this medicine cost more than 50 yuan per injection.

After all, in her understanding, with the development of science and technology, medicines that were originally expensive can now be mass-produced and become very cheap.

For example, penicillin, which was more expensive than gold 100 years ago, now costs a few cents a drug.

"Yes, the special drug Nocinogen for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy is so expensive, and 50 is still the current price. When Nocinogen first entered our country, it cost 100 million."

Zhao Heng also nodded. He did not expect that Ms. Liu would pay special attention to children with spinal muscular atrophy. However, this group of patients is different from other patients.

To put it bluntly, the only hope for these children suffering from spinal muscular atrophy is money. As long as they have money to buy the injection of Nocinogen, they can have a hope of survival. This is simply too cruel.

Nearly 1000 million treatment costs, how many families can bear it?
"That's right. Many families with children are trying to make up for the first year's treatment expenses. In the second and third years, there is really nothing they can do. Even a rescue group like ours, in the face of This kind of high medical expenses is beyond our capabilities."

Ms. Liu also said with great emotion.

"Dr. Zhao, I feel that you have such deep knowledge in tumor treatment. If you can understand by analogy, if you can develop a cheap and effective special drug for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy, it will be true for tens of thousands of children. It is the grace of regeneration."

After a pause, Ms. Liu said to Zhao Heng in a casual manner.

"Ms. Liu, you think highly of me. This Nosinogen was developed by a foreign pharmaceutical company at a cost of billions of dollars. My ability alone may not be comparable to such a huge pharmaceutical company. "

Hearing this, Zhao Heng shook his head slightly. In modern society, the research and development of every new drug costs more than one billion dollars. This has been verified by the beautiful country.

Therefore, in China now, many people don’t take pains to research and develop new drugs, but are keen to develop ancient prescriptions and secret medicines, or they claim to extract something from something. In short, the atmosphere of drug development is very bad.

As far as Zhao Heng is concerned, he can at best be regarded as the ultimate suture monster who has gathered the skills and experience of doctors in various departments of the Eastern Hospital. In terms of knowledge and skill breadth, he is naturally enough, but when it comes to developing new drugs, it is still a big problem. To go deep into biology and even genetics, in this regard, he only has one skill he picked up from Professor Li Hongwei, and that is cell fate regulation.

Obviously, for spinal muscular atrophy, an autosomal recessive genetic disease, that is, a genetic disease, without world-class genetics and biological attainments, it will take a few years to develop specific drugs. here.

Even Professor Li Hongwei, the most powerful scholar that Zhao Heng has met so far, does not have this kind of ability, and Zhao Heng believes that no scientist in the world can independently develop this special medicine.

To put it bluntly, this is not a job that can be done by one person.

"Little Doctor Zhao, I think with your potential, if it doesn't work now, it may not work in the future. If you want to conduct research in this area, I can fund you."

Of course, Ms. Liu knows that it is impossible for Zhao Heng to develop a new drug that other pharmaceutical companies spent billions of dollars and took several years to develop by himself.

But it didn't prevent her from admiring Zhao Heng and investing in a potential stock early.

In addition to being the head of a social assistance group, she is actually the actual owner of a large investment bank.

"I will consider it if I can achieve it in the future."

Zhao Heng thought about it seriously and nodded.

Although he has already agreed, the road is very long. Among other things, he has not fully picked up the skills and experience of Professor Li Hongwei. These great professors are really unfathomable.

In order to achieve the level of development of the special drug Nuoxishengna proposed by Ms. Liu, according to Zhao Heng's estimation, at least ten top scholars at the level of Professor Li Hongwei must be integrated, and they must be in the same discipline but with different research directions. to have this level.

So, this is a long way to go.

Hearing the conversation between Zhao Heng and Ms. Liu, Wei Wei, who was sitting on the side, was moved. It can be said that at this moment, what the two of them were thinking was very pure. It was pure hope that they could have a cheap and effective The specific medicine came out to relieve the pain of those children.

However, she still thinks that Ms. Liu's thinking is a little simpler. The reason why this drug is so expensive must be that the drug development company must work hard to make money, because she has learned that the patent of a drug worldwide is now The time limit is only 20 years, which means that the patent law only protects the economic interests of drug developers for 20 years, and after 20 years, it can be imitated by other countries.

There are only 20 years to collect money, so it is natural to set a high price, as much as you can collect.

But it is not surprising that Ms. Liu thinks this way from an emotional point of view.

In this world, after all, interests dominate everything.

"Well, Doctor Xiao Zhao, I know this is a difficult task, but as long as someone does it, it will definitely come true."

It's not that Ms. Liu didn't ask other doctors before, but they shook their heads as soon as they heard it, joking, this is something a large pharmaceutical company does, how can one person complete it.

"In fact, if we want to develop a drug that is suitable for all children with spinal muscular atrophy, then I am not able to do it now, because it needs to start from a very deep genetic level. But the spinal muscular atrophy The cause of the pathology is the degeneration and inactivation of neurons. If we use stem cell cultivation to cultivate individual neural stem cells and inject them into patients, it should be able to relieve symptoms.”

Seeing Ms. Liu like this, an idea suddenly flashed in Zhao Heng's mind, he thought for a while and said.

It doesn't have to be done in one hit, but step by step. Drugs related to gene therapy, with his current ability, naturally cannot be developed.

However, he can still use the method of neural stem cell cultivation to cultivate neural stem cells, relieve symptoms and prolong the life span.

"Is it expensive to use this neural stem cell culture method?"

When Ms. Liu heard what Zhao Heng said, her eyes lit up and she asked.

"The cost of training plus transplantation, if it is a child, it will add up to 20 to [-]."

Zhao Heng made a calculation and said.

"So how long can the survival period be extended?"

Ms. Liu asked impatiently.

"This depends on the individual's onset speed, but based on the usual onset speed of spinal muscular atrophy, it is not a problem to prolong it by five to ten years."

Zhao Heng thought about it seriously and said.

"Doctor Zhao, are you sure it can be extended for five to ten years?"

Ms. Liu was very excited at this time.

It can be extended for five to ten years, and after five or ten years, the medicine will naturally not be more expensive.

"Ah."

Zhao Heng nodded affirmatively.

(End of this chapter)