Chapter 237

Translator: Dreamscribe

“Is that true?”

Stern’s voice trembled uncontrollably.

“Yes. There were some useful ones even among common medications. There was a lot more data than I expected.”

Drug Repurposing.

Using drugs approved for general purposes as cancer treatments. It was a field of research that had steadily drawn attention from the medical community. There were currently studies showing that around 130 non-cancer drugs had demonstrated effectiveness in clinical settings, but who would have thought they would connect to the Life Matrix?

Clara spoke in amazement.

“So this is how a problem we’ve struggled with for years gets solved. It’s clear that Metformin has anticancer effects, but they’ve only ever been confirmed in a very small number of cases.”

In 2005, a British research team began to question something. Cancer incidence was unusually high among patients with obesity or diabetes.

As they dug deeper and studied the relationship between insulin secretion and cancer incidence, the team discovered a strange phenomenon. Among diabetic patients, the group taking Metformin had a noticeably lower cancer incidence than the others.

Pharmaceutical companies became convinced that Metformin had anticancer effects and immediately launched studies. But even after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into research, they failed to produce meaningful results in clinical trials.

“I pulled up the drugs that are likely to have an effect here.”

Click.

Mebendazole, used as an antiparasitic drug, Atorvastatin, used to treat hyperlipidemia, and several antibiotics and immunomodulators appeared on the screen.

Stern let out a sigh when he saw them.

“Old drugs. There’s been research on them in academia too. I remember reading the papers. There was even a case where a patient was completely cured of cancer after receiving Atorvastatin.”

His expression filled with regret.

It was like sending countless ships out to sea without a compass. A few had luckily reached their destination, but most had not.

“Decades.”

Stern could not tear his eyes away from the screen.

He spoke quietly.

“One day, a doctor couldn’t bear to watch a child dying of cancer and tried giving the child several different drugs. One of them, an antiparasitic drug, worked.”

Countless doctors had fought back in total darkness, without evidence or certainty, simply because they could not bring themselves to give up.

All of those attempts had become data and were now fully incorporated into the Life Matrix. Attempts whose names had never been preserved, discoveries buried after being ignored by academia. The tiny matches that had burned in the darkness for decades had finally met Seo-ha and joined together into a brilliant light.

Seo-ha smiled brightly.

“In the end, they won.”

Stern’s eyes grew moist.

If they could bypass the FDA’s standard approval process, it would be possible to obtain authorization within days through off-label use or an emergency clinical trial application.

“Good. I’ll take responsibility for persuading the Hopkins ethics committee and the IRB. The hospital director is already beside himself over this, so he won’t spare any administrative support. Let’s start preparing the Phase 1 Clinical Trial protocol for the Life Matrix as early as tomorrow.”

A miracle was becoming reality right before their eyes.

Clara clenched her fist. Her heart pounded so hard she could barely contain herself at the thought that they might finally conquer the cancer she had devoted her entire life to researching.

***

A few days later, in a special isolation ward at the Johns Hopkins Cancer Center.

Thanks to Stern and the hospital director’s relentless drive, along with Seo-ha’s reputation, which even the FDA could not ignore, the Phase 1 Clinical Trial for Life Matrix-based Drug Repurposing was approved at unprecedented speed.

Only five patients were included in the first protocol.

All of them had failed every form of chemotherapy and immunotherapy and had only a few months left to live. With their backs truly against the wall, they signed the consent forms desperately, as though grasping their last lifeline.

Humm-

A newly installed server in the center of the ward was linked to Rockfish.

The vitals of the first patient, a white man in his sixties, fluctuated across the screen in real time.

“Not yet?”

“Just wait a little longer.”

It seemed as though every doctor at Johns Hopkins involved in cancer treatment had gathered there. Unable to hide their anxiety, they nervously bit their nails.

There was only one person they were watching, Seo-ha. He stood before the board and picked up a marker.

The human body was a Complex System in itself.

From the instant a drug entered the bloodstream, the Butterfly Effect multiplied explosively, almost mocking the limits of binary computation. It was a realm where one had to grasp the enormous flow created by tens of millions of microscopic variables all at once. It was something a Turing Machine could never accomplish. But the world unfolding inside Seo-ha’s mind was not bound by those limitations.

The universe was not built in binary.

Even within the seemingly chaotic mutation and proliferation of cells, there were certain rules. If those rules could be represented perfectly through mathematics....

Scribble, scribble.

His Computation Theory had not yet been proven.

But he was certain that if he kept advancing one step at a time like this, he would eventually reach the answer.

Seo-ha’s marker danced across the board. Then, after a long while,

“Done.”

He set the marker down.

The enormous whiteboard was packed with intricate equations and geometric figures. Jeff, the hospital director, stepped forward until his face was practically against the board and stared intently at the equations written across it.

“....”

“....”

It was mathematics that had transcended the boundaries of medicine, distilling life itself down to pure chains of cause and effect. Even if they could not understand it, everyone could feel what they were witnessing.

It was the sight of a single human intellect overwhelming the wall of despair that medicine had never been able to overcome.

Tap, clack.

Sri stepped up to the keyboard and entered the values Seo-ha had calculated. ST Compression activated, and the data filtering began.

Beep-beep.

Before long, the results appeared on the screen.

Several doctors stepped closer to examine the prescription.

“Metformin, Doxycycline, Ivermectin, Fenbendazole, Hydroxychloroquine.... Are you saying this will really work?”

They were antibiotics and antiparasitic drugs commonly found in hospitals. There was even an antimalarial drug among them.

Theo stepped forward and pointed at the screen.

“The timing is crucial. You need to understand the mechanism each drug triggers. Metformin and Doxycycline will attack the cancer cells’ energy factories, the Mitochondria, from both sides. The cancer cells will look for an alternate route to survive, but....”

Every doctor opened a notebook and began writing down his words.

“...Finally, once the cancer cells have weakened, Fenbendazole, an antiparasitic drug, will completely disrupt their Microtubules.”

It was a precisely engineered chain reaction with carefully staggered timing.

They had no idea how something like this could possibly be calculated, but logically, it made sense.

Gulp.

The doctors nodded with determined expressions.

Then came the day of administration.

Stern personally took charge. He approached the patient and greeted him warmly.

“How are you feeling today, Kyle?”

“Very good. I’m counting on you, Doctor.”

The man in his sixties extended an emaciated arm.

Even lying down seemed difficult for him. The doctors could see the shadow of death hanging over him. But now that he had encountered the possibility of salvation for the first time, his eyes were still full of life.

‘He’s fortunate. He still has the will to live.’

Stern nodded.

This was not a new drug developed at a cost of trillions of won, but a combination of ordinary medications that could be purchased even at a neighborhood pharmacy. Could such a strange prescription truly treat Pancreatic Cancer, the disease known as the graveyard of modern medicine?

The doctors carefully monitored the patient’s condition as they administered the drugs.

***

Twenty-four hours after administration.

The attending physician entered the patient’s room with a resident. Over the past day, they had experienced something remarkable.

“Fascinating. Everything really is progressing exactly as predicted.”

“I know. How in the world....”

The metabolic changes inside the patient’s body were following the timeline of the equations Seo-ha had written on the board with chilling precision.

The resident looked at the monitor and spoke.

“The patient’s vitals are stable. Both his liver and kidney function markers are improving.”

None of the horrific side effects associated with chemotherapy appeared. These were drugs whose safety had already been proven over decades of use.

Then came the morning of the third day after administration.

Bzzt-

The patient’s tumor marker(CA19-9) results appeared on the monitor.

[CA19-9 : 5,400 U/mL → 4,250 U/mL]

“Huh?”

“It... it dropped.”

The attending physician checking the data dropped his pen.

Tumor marker levels in terminal Pancreatic Cancer patients did not decrease before death. It was accepted medical knowledge that no one had ever questioned.

Stern rushed into the room and shouted.

“Are you sure? Check it again!”

“We checked. It really did drop.”

Thud.

The strength left his knees.

What those numbers meant.

It meant that, for the first time in human history, terminal Pancreatic Cancer had been forced to take a step back.

“Let’s move on to the next stage.”

They hurried to administer the prescriptions to the other patients as well.

And three days later.

“...It worked.”

Clara spoke as she stared at the screen with reddened eyes.

The same pattern of tumor breakdown was visible in all five patients. There was no doubt that this was the Life Matrix at work.

The courtyard in front of the hospital’s main building.

An official briefing from the Johns Hopkins Cancer Center was held there, with the area packed with reporters and patients’ family members holding picket signs.

Click!

Hospital Director Jeff slowly walked up and stood before the podium. Behind him, all the specialists from the cancer center stood in a row.

Amid the bursts of camera shutters and flashes, Jeff took the microphone with an excited expression.

“Speaking on behalf of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

For the past two weeks, we have conducted an emergency clinical trial based on Director Yu Seo-ha’s Life Matrix theory. Every participant was a terminal Pancreatic Cancer patient for whom all treatment options had been exhausted.”

Everyone held their breath.

[Please save my wife.]

The hands of the man holding the sign trembled.

Jeff swept his gaze over them before taking out the materials he had prepared.

“I will now share the results. Seventy-two hours after administration, every patient showed improvement. Extensive tumor shrinkage was observed in all five patients, with an average reduction rate of 23.4 percent. In addition to tumor markers, liver markers, cardiac markers, and systemic inflammation indicators all showed improvement.”

Click!

Click!

“Were there any side effects?”

At the reporter’s question, Jeff handed the microphone to Stern.

Stern took a moment to steady his breathing before looking out at the audience.

“The Life Matrix is a treatment fundamentally different from conventional cancer therapy. So far, the only side effect we have observed is mild digestive discomfort.”

“Then are you saying Pancreatic Cancer has been completely conquered?”

The courtyard fell silent.

“Today’s results do not mean we have achieved a complete cure. The clinical trials have only just begun. But there is one thing I can say with certainty.”

He gripped the microphone tightly.

“The Silent Killer, with a cure rate of just 10 percent. A deadly disease known as the graveyard of modern medicine. But from today onward, a diagnosis of Pancreatic Cancer will mean something different than it did yesterday. We now have hope, and the odds are very much in our favor.”

Thump.

The man dropped his sign.

He covered his face with both hands, and his shoulders began to shake. At the same time, sobbing spread throughout the crowd.

“Lastly, on behalf of the medical community, I would like to express my deepest respect to Director Yu Seo-ha and Team Apex for making today’s miracle possible.”

Swoosh.

The reporters followed Stern’s gaze.

Then an overwhelming barrage of camera flashes, bright enough to swallow the midday sunlight, erupted toward Seo-ha.

The news spread rapidly.

[The Silent Assassin That Even Took Steve Jobs Has Finally Been Collared.]

[The Road to Conquering Pancreatic Cancer Opens. What Is Yu Seo-ha’s Life Matrix?]

No paper had even been published yet.

The lobby of the Johns Hopkins Cancer Center was packed shoulder to shoulder with doctors who had flocked there. Scholars who would normally have been seated in places of honor and treated with the utmost respect were reduced to grabbing residents by the sleeves and pleading for a single photocopy of a clinical chart, creating an almost absurd scene.

The doctors who examined the patient charts and the prescriptions generated by Rockfish could not hide their astonishment.

And eventually, they arrived at the equations Seo-ha had written on the whiteboard. The doctors stood before them in silence for a long time.

“...Is this the Life Matrix?”

“It seems so.”

It was a system of notation none of them had ever seen before.

They could not understand a thing.

But they desperately wanted to.

The Life Matrix equations would later become medical students’ worst enemy and completely overturn the paradigm of medical history.

MIT’s Department of Mathematics and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine jointly launched a research team the following spring.

*****

If you enjoy this novel, please review and rate it at Novelupdates. Thanks! 😊

To receive the latest update notifications or report mistakes, join our Discord server linked below.