Chapter 140 The Nanny's Niece's Counterattack 140 ...
How many? Sales started right away, and orders immediately exceeded one million. Compared to that, the two hundred million for the vegetative state patient seems rather insignificant. But isn't it quite interesting? There's been no breakthrough progress with either medication or other treatments—isn't that a difficult problem? Lin Wei enjoys solving difficult problems.
After obtaining Eleanor's medical records from the previous two years, she quickly began to study them, including the location of her injuries, her current level of consciousness, whether she could hear external sounds, and the current safety of her organs and tissues.
She was no different from other patients in a vegetative state, except that the location and extent of their brain damage differed. In fact, the second-generation CL drug would have been sufficient to solve this problem, but neither Lin Wei nor Chi Boyan had considered using it.
Aside from the fact that it must be kept secret, if this drug cures one person in a vegetative state, what if other people in a vegetative state want treatment? What then? External drugs can only be used as an aid; ultimately, it still depends on one's own abilities. That's all Lin Wei could say.
Upon arriving at the rehabilitation department, Lin Wei looked at the only vegetative patient in the courtyard and asked the doctor, "Since he is in a vegetative state due to traumatic brain injury, why can't he have surgery? Before the CL drug was available, craniotomy could have aggravated the traumatic brain injury and caused sequelae, but now that the CL drug is available, this risk should no longer exist."
When faced with questions she didn't know the answers to, she didn't hesitate to ask for guidance.
The rehabilitation physician said, "You are right. Surgery is possible, but even so, the patient's chances of regaining consciousness are extremely low because his cerebral cortex is extensively damaged and nerve cells are dead. Surgery cannot repair these dead nerve cells."
"Actually, when the CL drug came out, we did think about whether it could repair cells. The answer is yes, but it can only repair damaged cells, not necrotic cells. We thought that nerve cells are probably the same as ordinary cells."
Lin Wei internally denied it, "No, it's because the drug isn't strong enough." If it were strong enough, what would it matter if the cells were dead? It could still be saved. However, she still inquired about the current methods for reviving the patient.
A rehabilitation physician said, "Currently, we generally use medication to induce awakening, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, nerve electrical stimulation, and some rehabilitation training to help patients wake up. However, it is clear that the results are not very good. Some patients who receive awakening treatment immediately after traumatic brain injury have a chance of waking up, but more often than not, it fails."
"This patient has been in our hospital for five years, but his family has not given up on him and insists on giving him wake-up treatment."
Lin Wei frowned slightly. To revive a patient, several steps were necessary: First, restore the brain's state. Second, promote nerve cell recovery (crossed out) – find ways to get some nerve cells to grow back. Third, use external force to stimulate the patient's sensory organs, promoting the return of consciousness.
However, as medical professionals know, there are three types of cells in the human body that cannot regenerate, including nerve cells. This is because neurons are highly differentiated and have lost their ability to divide, so damaged cells cannot be replaced by new cells.
Ugh, Lin Wei had a headache. Wasn't this forcing her to come up with crooked ideas?
Then she thought of a solution: nerve cell transplantation. Since pancreatic islet cells could be transplanted into diabetic patients to rebuild the islets and restore pancreatic fluid secretion, why couldn't nerve cells be transplanted as well? Alternatively, she could research neurotrophic factors to promote nerve cell proliferation and differentiation. Lin Wei planned to try them one by one.
As she was leaving, the patient's family returned. Ms. Zhang Youqing watched her leave and then looked at the doctor in the rehabilitation department and asked, "Is this the new doctor in your department? Why does she look so young?" Having worked in the rehabilitation department for five years, it was hard for her not to be familiar with the doctors.
The rehabilitation physician gave a wry smile and said, "If only she were one of our doctors, we couldn't handle her. She's the director of the tumor drug trial center, and she invented that new anti-tumor drug. She's here to research ways to revive vegetative patients. She heard we had a case, so she came to take a look."
Ms. Zhang Youqing's heart pounded when she heard this, and she couldn't help but feel excited. "Can she really find a way to wake up a person in a vegetative state? Will my son really be able to wake up one day?" She thought she had given up hope, but unexpectedly, she still held onto some faint hope.
The rehabilitation doctor said, "I don't know about that. All I know is that she only spent a few months to half a year researching anti-tumor drugs. If anyone in the world can find a way to wake up a person in a vegetative state, she is definitely one of them." Feeling sorry for the mother in front of him, the rehabilitation doctor thought for a moment and said, "If she comes again next time, I can ask about her situation for you." It was just a small matter for him to ask a question.
But for Zhang Youqing, this was a huge deal. She kept saying, "Thank you, doctor. Thank you, doctor." She felt full of energy for everything she did. In fact, over the past five years, she had followed various teams and research on reviving vegetative patients, but she had experienced three or four times the initial hope turned into disappointment.
She always says she'll do research, but a year or two has passed without any progress. But now she wants to believe again.
So while Lin Wei was conducting research in the simulation room, someone in the rehabilitation department was eagerly waiting for her to come. She preferred to ask the questions herself rather than have a doctor ask them for her help, as she felt more at ease that way.
At this moment, in the simulation room, Lin Wei is performing surgery on a vegetative patient. The first step is to open the cranium and try to restore the brain tissue as much as possible. She wants to see how much the simulation room will score her under the CL fifth-generation drug, and how much she will score if she receives electrical stimulation.
Finally, looking at the E and C- scores, she understood why the patient couldn't wake up. Under these conditions, it would be a miracle if the patient could. She had originally intended to use the patient's own nerve cells for transplantation, but abandoned the idea after understanding their structure and function. The division of labor and cooperation among nerve cells in each part were different, and their structures and morphologies also varied; those cells could not replace the necrotic nerve cells in the cerebral cortex.
So where would the transplanted nerve cells come from? Lin Wei thought of two directions: First, obtain them from other neurosurgical patients. With the patient's consent during surgery, a small amount could be extracted and stored using certain methods. Second, obtain them from animals. However, this also presents a challenge: it's unknown which animal's nerve cells are identical to those in the cerebral cortex, so further verification is needed.
In comparison, researching neurotrophic factors seems simpler. She wasn't referring to the simplicity of the research itself, but rather the simplicity of the procedure. It doesn't require examining or operating on animals, nor does it require obtaining the patient's consent. Who would dare have some of their nerve cells removed? What if there are side effects?
However, she was also curious to see if these two methods would work, so she simply handed the matter over to Chi Boyan. She figured it was better to leave such a dirty, bloody, and complicated task to him; Lin Wei didn't want to be the bad guy.
Chi Boyan: "..."
"You're planning to start with neurotrophic factors?"
Lin Wei: "Well, if the patient is in a hurry, then we can use human nerve cell transplantation. If they're not in a hurry, we can study the differences between animal brains and human brains, nerve cells, and their functions. If we can find cells that are the same as or similar to human nerve cells, that would be best." When there are alternatives available, animal nerve cells are ultimately more readily available than human nerve cells.
However, neither of these can be as readily available for mass production and use as neurotrophic factors.
Chi Boyan glanced at the nerve cells he had just extracted from the brains of some volunteers not far away. He was embarrassed to say that he had already started. As for neurotrophic factors, he hadn't even considered researching them; that was too slow. If this nerve cell transplant didn't work, he had even considered whether to perform a brain tissue transplant. Anyway, the volunteers and transplant recipients were all handled by the Dolores, and all he needed to do was know how to perform the surgery.
But it's best not to tell her any of this.
"Okay." He was worried about the side effects after the transplant, whether rejection would occur, since no one had ever transplanted nerve cells before, and whether the subsequent electrical stimulation would work, or whether a deeper stimulation would be needed.
Lin Wei: "We'll talk about that later, one step at a time." Then she asked about the progress of his AIDS research, "Where are you at in your research?"
Chi Boyan: "I'm not as fast as you in researching anti-tumor drugs. Although I have developed an AIDS drug, it is not yet a true drug. The current drug is only for patients in the early stages of infection and has not been used to control the infection."
Some of the ingredients in the drugs he produces are incompatible with drugs controlled by the state, which means that the drugs cannot be used on them, otherwise serious tissue damage would occur.
In his view, it was a useless piece of work, plus a failure.
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