Chapter 230

Translator: Dreamscribe

47th floor of Coban Bio Science headquarters in central Manhattan, New York.

The Hudson River was visible beyond the windows. The clear weather felt completely at odds with the atmosphere in the conference room.

Tap.

Tap.

Declan, the chairman and CEO, tapped the table with his ballpoint pen, producing a steady rhythm. The executives attending the meeting almost felt as though he were striking each of them on the head with that pen.

After a suffocating silence, he finally spoke.

“Minus 20 percent. A historic drop. Has our company’s stock price ever fallen this sharply before?”

CFO Martin Schultz removed his glasses, his expression stiff. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment before he looked down at the documents and answered.

“When the CAR-T Cell Therapy clinical trial failed, we fell 15 percent. So today marks the largest single-day decline in the company’s history.”

“At least things weren’t confusing back then. There was a clear reason, the clinical trial had failed.”

The chairman set down his ballpoint pen.

“But what about now? We haven’t failed to develop a new drug, and none of our existing drug patents have expired. Yet the very foundation of this company is being shaken by a single article saying that one mathematician has begun developing a treatment for Pancreatic Cancer. Has the market succumbed to collective insanity?”

Every executive lowered their head beneath his icy gaze. Among them, Dr. Jonathan Weiss, head of R&D, slowly raised his hand.

“It isn’t insanity, Chairman. The market is behaving very rationally right now.”

Someone could be heard swallowing.

“Rationally?”

“...That is my assessment. The stock market is a place where people bet on the future, not the present. Until now, Coban’s stock price was based on the assumption that we would continue maintaining our dominant position in the oncology market.”

“You’re saying that position could collapse even though he hasn’t produced a single result? Do people really believe something so absurd?”

Jonathan shook his head.

“I don’t think the market has concluded that Yu Seo-ha is guaranteed to succeed. If it had, the decline wouldn’t have stopped at this level. What shareholders are worried about is the possibility itself. Even if there’s only a one percent chance, that would still be enough to cause a seismic shift in the oncology market.”

The conference room fell silent, as though someone had poured cold water over everyone.

“Uncertainty....”

Declan’s gaze grew even colder.

He knew Yu Seo-ha extremely well. A genius who had been effortlessly conquering the greatest unsolved problems of the century. But those had all been problems of mathematical theory. Declan had assumed there would be no point of contact with real-world biotechnology, especially oncology, where clinical trials were crucial.

“Do we have a countermeasure?”

“....”

“Don’t tell me we have nothing. Not with the salaries this company pays all of you.”

Martin, the CFO, cautiously raised his hand.

“Chairman. The executives, myself included, believe this is a sentiment issue. The market will eventually return to reality. In fact, no one in this room actually believes he’ll succeed, do they?”

Several executives nodded.

The chairman said nothing. He slowly rose from his seat and walked over to the window.

“Martin, you may be right.”

“....”

“But sitting around and doing nothing because we’re counting on that possibility is not how Coban operates.”

He turned around.

His gaze was terrifyingly cold now, unlike before.

“If there is even the slightest chance that the project begins to look genuinely viable, there’ll be no turning back. Are we supposed to sit here and quietly watch that happen?”

He slowly looked around the room as he spoke.

“Shut it down by any means necessary.”

The executives began murmuring among themselves.

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Isn’t figuring that out your job!”

Everyone flinched at the chairman’s shout. But they soon nodded and left the room.

***

Johns Hopkins research building.

A new security gate was being installed at the entrance. It was a system that could not be accessed with existing identification cards.

“This entire area is being converted into a restricted zone.”

Clara said as she looked at Theo.

The project had not officially begun yet, but Theo had come to the hospital early to inspect the facilities.

What Jeff had said kept bothering him.

“It’ll be inconvenient, but please update the parking garage and elevator authentication systems as well.”

“Don’t worry. I have no idea what Jeff is thinking, but he’s given us an almost unlimited budget. We’re going to take every possible precaution.”

The research building had been quiet just last week, but now it was in an uproar, as though someone had kicked a hornet’s nest.

Theo guessed that the articles published yesterday were the reason.

[Johns Hopkins - Team Apex Officially Confirms Joint Pancreatic Cancer Research. Yu Seo-ha Personally Participating]

[Yu Seo-ha to Solve Cancer with Mathematics? Medical Community Divided Between ‘Hope and Concern’]

[Will the Medical Landscape Change? Pharmaceutical Industry on Edge as Mathematics-Based Drug Development Becomes a Real Possibility]

[Who Are the Members of Team Apex? The Geniuses Standing Beside Yu Seo-ha]

Readers’ reactions were favorable as well. Everyone seemed to be placing their hopes in Seo-ha.

└Pharma stocks tanking over this is hilarious ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

└I really hope this works. Someone in my family is being treated for cancer, and we’ve already spent more than a hundred thousand dollars in just six months. Pharmaceutical companies have taken their exploitation way too far.

└Honestly, I hope this exposes some of the pharma industry’s practices while they’re at it. Only people who know how haphazard drug development can be will understand.

└How bad is it?

└They basically throw thousands of candidate compounds at the wall and see which ones survive. Getting one of those all the way through clinical trials takes an average of ten years and costs tens of millions of dollars.

└Yeah. Half the time even the developers don’t fully understand the mechanism. The current clinical approach is basically to administer it first and see how people respond. If they can establish an actual mathematical basis for it, that would be a revolution on the level of inventing the microscope.

└Even FDA-approved drugs get pulled later because of side effects all the time. I’m telling you, they don’t even understand the fundamental mechanisms themselves. It’s practically folk medicine ㅋㅋㅋ

└I work in pharma. It’s not all like that, but honestly, it’s hard to argue with what you’re saying. If high clinical failure rates are the reason drugs are so expensive, then we should at least be learning something from those failures. But in reality, we often move straight on to the next candidate without even knowing what went wrong. I can’t deny that there are more drugs on the market that were approved because they happened to work than drugs that were developed from a proper understanding of their mechanisms.

Installation technicians in work clothes hurried back and forth, pushing carts.

Every time the elevator doors opened, more equipment was wheeled out. Cryo-Electron Microscopes, sequencing equipment, high-speed centrifuges, and even automated cell culture systems.

“Wow.... I’ve only ever seen equipment like this in journals.”

Clara ran a hand over one of the boxes with a delighted expression.

People connected cables, leveled machines, opened manuals, and checked specifications. Several installation technicians were assigned to each laboratory.

Theo watched them with a calm expression. Looking at his emotionless face, Clara thought.

‘Does he really feel no pressure at all?’

Clara was already worried.

What were they supposed to do if they failed to produce results after this much investment? Far too much money was involved for it to end with her simply losing her position.

She looked at Theo and asked.

“Aren’t you nervous?”

“About what?”

“If the project fails, Team Apex’s reputation will take a hit too. You might not receive the same kind of treatment you do now.”

Theo gave a small shrug.

“Neither Seo-ha nor the rest of us cares about reputation. Besides, failure?”

He let out a faint scoff.

Was he looking down on medicine? Clara felt the need to warn him.

“Theodore. Medicine isn’t such a simple discipline. Patient data can fluctuate depending on their condition that day. If you’re imagining something that falls neatly into place like a mathematical formula, then I should warn you now that you’re going to have a very difficult time.”

Hearing her words, Theo turned his head.

“Professor. Mathematicians are people who deal with invisible concepts. We divide infinity, prove dimensions that cannot be observed, and describe the entire universe through logical consistency alone. Mathematics requires us to create and destroy countless worlds inside our heads.”

Clara stared blankly at him.

“Compared to that, how easy is a discipline like medicine, where physical evidence exists right in front of you?”

“...What?”

“Seo-ha stands apart even among mathematicians like that. Across all of human history, for that matter. And you’re saying Seo-ha might fail? I don’t mean to disparage medicine, but honestly, I simply can’t imagine it.”

His attitude was frighteningly arrogant.

And yet he showed no sign of showing off. His expression made it seem as though he was simply stating the facts, leaving Clara at a loss for words.

Medicine was a battle against uncertainty.

The same cancer.

The same drug.

And yet one person survived while another died. Medicine had certainly advanced, but at the same time, it was also a discipline built upon experience, statistics, and endless trial and error.

Shiver-

She could tell from his expression.

‘He really believes cancer can be solved too.’

If something could not be proven, they would not accept it.

If it was not logically complete, then from their perspective, the problem had not truly been solved. They were fundamentally a different breed from people like her, who did not always dig into the underlying principle as long as the outcome was good.

Theodore Langford.

A talent America was proud of, and a man widely expected around the world to receive the next Fields Prize. Unlike Seo-ha, Team Apex’s second-in-command did not give off a particularly friendly impression.

She crumpled the memo she had been holding in her hand.

The project would begin the following week, and the memo contained a list of papers she had thought might help them.

‘If I give it to them now, they’ll obviously just find it annoying. I’ll slip it to them once they’re writhing in agony.’

It was Clara’s own small revenge for being dismissed.

***

“Before we begin the research in earnest, these are materials on the fundamentals of molecular biology and the genetic variations found in Pancreatic Cancer cells that all of you will need to familiarize yourselves with.”

On the first day of the project, Stern said as he placed a stack of papers on the desk.

They might be mathematicians, but they still needed to understand exactly what they were trying to work with.

KRAS Mutation.

TP53 Inactivation.

Tumor Microenvironment.

Metabolic Reprogramming.

The material looked to be several thousand pages long.

The researchers assigned to the project watched with intrigued expressions. Even someone exceptionally intelligent would need several weeks to digest all of that.

That was what everyone thought.

But the next day-

“The probability model for genetic recombination described in Chapter 4 is based on a flawed underlying assumption. From a mathematical perspective, it contains an obvious error.”

They had given them material to study, only to be told that the textbook itself was wrong.

“This model treats the cell division cycle as a fixed constant. But Pancreatic Cancer cells divide at different rates depending on hypoxic conditions. The clinical data supports my hypothesis as well. If you look at the data here....”

The researchers were stunned.

Stern and Clara hurriedly examined the data she presented. Then their mouths fell open.

An awkward atmosphere settled over the room.

Unable to bear it any longer, one of the researchers stepped forward and said.

“That paper was published in Nature, and it’s been cited more than 800 times.”

“So?”

Su-jeong looked up and asked.

There was no malice in her expression. She genuinely looked as though she was wondering what the number of citations had to do with logical validity.

“....”

“I found a few too....”

Cecilia pointed out problems with the Pharmacokinetic Model. Biological responses were nonlinear, so why did these models assume linearity?

Then came comments from Sri and Theo.

“Me too....”

“If you look here as well....”

Ben sighed and pressed a hand to his forehead. Then he stepped forward and bowed his head.

“I apologize. These people have spent so much time doing nothing but mathematics in the lab that their social skills are severely lacking. I’d appreciate your understanding.”

Stern, the center director, gestured toward one side with his eyes and asked.

“What is the director doing over there?”

Seo-ha had his head planted on the desk.

Medicine was, by its very nature, a discipline forced to compromise with uncertainty. To Seo-ha, these thousands of pages of papers were an unbearable cacophony.

It was a kind of barrier he had never encountered before. The mental fatigue caused by that enormous amount of noise had completely worn Seo-ha out.

Realizing what was happening, Ben scratched his head and said.

“Uh... I guess we’ll have to start over by reorganizing the data?”

The truth was that every author of those papers was among the researchers dispatched to the project. They had all been published in major journals, and the researchers themselves had taken great pride in those accomplishments.

On the first day of the project, the authors had to secretly retreat to the bathroom and shed tears.

*****

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