Chapter 143: Chapter 134: A Ten Million-Level Concept

[Biological Laboratory]

[Current Key Laboratory Personnel:]

[Senior Research Director: Kurt Conners]

[Description: An expert proficient in molecular biology with strong capabilities in various fields of bioengineering, including gene engineering and pharmaceutical engineering.]

[Support Staff: Hammond Treto]

[Description: A driven ordinary person, well-versed in dodging debts and adept at managing social organizations, passionately involved in the management of the Biological Laboratory.]

[Assistive Strategy: Your Biological Laboratory will more easily evade legal and ethical societal constraints, if necessary.]

Lille infiltrated the Biotechnology Building and obtained a wealth of data, which included the manufacturing methods of painkillers and α-neural retardants.

The reason being that the entire Nightingale Project was actually initiated based on the side effects of painkillers, with α-neural retardants essentially being painkillers soaked in retardants.

Retardants prolong the release time of the painkiller’s efficacy, reduce its intensity, and extend its duration of action.

The two drugs share highly overlapping active ingredients, and their pharmacological process causing neurodegenerative degeneration was also part of the experimental data, hence the presence of their manufacturing methods in the database.

In the Cyberpunk World, pharmaceutical equipment is strictly regulated; if you want to purchase it, you must register a company, and by registering a company, you almost surely accept hostility from other companies or buy into shares.

If you don’t register and don’t accept shares, fine, but other companies will engage in cutthroat corporate warfare with you, and Super Corporation tanks and combat robots will be at your company’s doorstep the next day.

And registering patents... well, that also brings about many involuntarily issues.

In other words, in the Cyberpunk World, if you’re an ordinary person, you’d know nothing and can only do dangerous jobs to earn some money, then buy expensive Prosthetics and pharmaceuticals to keep working.

Meanwhile, if you enter the corporate hierarchy, you become an ordinary person who knows some things, doomed to be a tool for making money for or oppressing those at the lower levels.

Even if you start a company, your company is merely a lackey working for the real Super Corporations, and if you don’t want to work for them, you get crushed by them.

This severely hinders technological progress in the Cyberpunk World to a certain extent.

However, in this world, things haven’t gone that far—not if someone wants to kill your company at the doorstep, not the next day, but maybe after a week or two.

"Boss, I’ve found out that your company is not so simple either. So, you’re the owner of Bloom Company that NYPD keeps talking about.

The second installment from NYPD has been deposited, totaling 340,000 US Dollars, plus the loan I secured for you, after deducting last month’s salaries and expenses, we now have 560,000 US Dollars at our disposal.

I’ve roughly calculated that Professor Conners’s expenses are about 240,000, and I’ll need 60,000 US Dollars here.

That leaves us with 260,000 US Dollars, what do you plan to do?"

"Start two new projects, I’ll tell you about them later."

Lille was not short of money, but he had a healthy cash flow—if it wasn’t for him telling Hammond to take it easy, that kid could have gotten him another 300,000 US Dollars in loans.

"Alright."

After hanging up the phone, Lille began to explain his ideas to Dr. Conners.

First came the retardants.

α-neural retardants, as a kind of slow-releasing pharmaceutical, mainly comprise two types of components: one type is painkiller pharmaceuticals with other auxiliary drugs; the other is the retardants—that is, ingredients used to delay the release of the drug’s effects.

This kind of drug, created with this approach, also existed in this world, so Conners quickly understood and grasped what Lille meant.

Using the side effect of painkillers—neurodegenerative degeneration—to balance the lizardization effect of Lizard Serum.

And using the retarding components to dilute both drug effects simultaneously, allowing the body to maintain human appearance and structure.

Consequently, this new pharmacological structure would bring about two effects: first, forgetting about lifespan, Lille could regain his health.

Secondly, painkillers would make Lille less sensitive to pain, acting as a kind of "Pain Editor"—a high-end prosthetic.

If prosthetics were used to control the dosage ratio, Lille could adjust the proportion of lizard serum at crucial moments for an overdrive in physical capability.

Conveniently, there was an existing prosthetic that could hold these components—the auxiliary heart.

With a minor modification to the auxiliary heart to substitute the artificial blood plasma with the three components and using micro-motors for control, it would achieve a balancing effect.

Of course, considering the dangers of lizard DNA, aside from Lille, not many people could use this kind of prosthetic.

After all, if the prosthetic failed, there would be no doubt that it would result in... a cybernetic lizard psychosis.

This was a custom prosthetic to solve Lille’s physical problems, which Lille would essentially have to develop on his own.

Then there was further research on lizard serum.

Injected into the human body, it could cause abnormalities in both mind and body of the subject, but what if it was used for purposes like tissue cultivation?

Professor Conners’ answer was to give it a try.

The human body is divided into several structural levels: cells, tissues, organs, systems, and the body as a whole.

In terms of restoring the damaged human body, lizard serum was proven to be of little use, but further research might yield different results.

Once Conners had calmed down, several ideas immediately came to his mind:

"...So we should move from the complex to the simple, skipping over the levels of the body and systems, we can first try the effects of lizard serum in repairing human organs.

Then there’s the restoration of individual categories of tissue cells, and finally, the restoration at the cellular level—"

Conners paused mid-speech: "I suddenly feel this is a part bound to be fruitful.

From the biological model you gave me, the proportion of reptilian red blood cells does not increase as much as that of mammalian cells after lizardization...

Maybe... my god, maybe we can truly achieve ’artificial blood’!"

Peter, who was sitting by listening, suddenly perked up: "It’s true... we could inject drugs directly into the bone marrow to increase the rate of blood production, obtaining a lot of blood that’s a mix of reptilian and mammalian red blood cells.

But as the effects of the drug fade, the lizard red blood cells would gradually die off, and what’s more convenient, mammalian red blood cells are DNA-free, which practically eliminates the risk of lizardization! They are also quite easy to detect!"

Artificial Blood!

Lille’s eyes gleamed!

Blood is a medical product used in massive quantities and also facing a massive shortfall within healthcare sectors!

The shortage of blood is not an issue for a single country but a global one!

The supply of blood is an indispensable part of national health care policies, yet the number of people willing to donate blood is decreasing every year, while the demand for blood keeps rising.

In this world, over the past year, some research institutions estimated that the shortfall in blood supply exceeded 40 million units for the entire year, creating a market that is nearly impossible to satisfy!

If this hypothesis could be realized...

Not only would they become one of the world’s most valuable pharmaceutical companies, but they could also save thousands, if not millions, of patients.

Lille had a premonition that this idea would definitely succeed.

"Then let’s... start the experiment, Professor Conners. If you need some guinea pigs for bone marrow stem cell donation, I’m willing to be the first to join."

"This isn’t the outcome I expected, but indeed, it is an exhilarating breakthrough," Conners said to Lille sincerely, "If it weren’t for you, I might have hit a dead end."

"Let’s figure out what stuff we need to buy," Lille rubbed his hands together.

This discovery was of great use in both worlds.