Doctor Zhao, help!

Chapter 360: Technology is worse than medicine

After coming out of the testing room, Zhu Yong was in a very good mood.

"Director Zhao, Professor Jin, the department's current focus is on sports rehabilitation."

"As for other research, generally speaking, the ministry and the group support it, but it just doesn't affect the overall direction."

Zhu Yong said to Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong again.

His words have made it very clear. As long as the two of them do a good job in sports rehabilitation, attract the world's top athletes to come here for treatment, and build this place into the world's top sports rehabilitation center, then Zhao Sheng and Jindong can apply Projects and resources are completely irrelevant.

As managers, Zhu Yong, Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong have different ideas.

The projects and research directions Zhu Yong wants are naturally the technologies that produce the greatest benefits in the shortest time, such as tendon repair technology.

But Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong are thinking more about how to bring long-term benefits to more patients.

"Okay, Minister Zhu."

Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong nodded together. This was something they had discussed together.

Zhu Yong left with satisfaction, and Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong came to an independent laboratory.

As soon as you enter this laboratory, the first thing you see is a very sci-fi scene. In a large cylindrical petri dish, what is displayed is a picture of neural tissue growing according to a specified structure.

This is the nerve repair technology that Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong are developing based on inspiration from stem cell tendon repair technology.

The raw material of this nerve tissue of growing nerves was extracted from a firefighter who has been a high paraplegic for more than ten years. When the nerve tissue grows, a transplant operation will be performed to replace the necrotic nerves of the firefighter. organize.

It can be said that nerve repair is an unsolvable problem around the world. This step taken by Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong can be said to be a big step forward.

If a blood vessel is broken, it can be anastomotic. When it regenerates, it only needs to heal the broken part.

But a nerve fiber has only one nerve cell. After it is severed, the dendrites or axons of the nerve cell will completely die, and the myelin sheath will be connected.

New synapses must slowly grow and crawl outward from the neurons in the spinal cord. In other words, even if only one point is broken, the entire nerve must be regenerated.

Therefore, Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong simply extracted nerve cells from the patient, redifferentiated and grew them, and then transplanted them back into the patient's body.

Unlike other body systems, the nervous system has a very limited capacity for renewal and repair.

From mid-uterine development to early postnatal life, the mammalian nervous system is fully established, and no new neurons will be produced thereafter.

The main problem in repairing damage to the nervous system is that other cells in the nervous system, such as glial cells, will do everything possible to hinder the regrowth of axons; there are also immune components in the nervous system, including astrocytes, microglia and oligodendrocytes. Glial cells, secrete cytokines to further prevent nerve regeneration.

The method developed by Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong is equivalent to bypassing these restrictions and regenerating directly. "Senior, as long as the clinical application of nerve regeneration is effective this time, stem cell therapy can be used in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases in the next step."

Zhao Sheng looked at the slowly growing nerves in the glass pillar in front of him and said to Jin Dong with some emotion.

Neurodegenerative diseases are chronic progressive degeneration of central nervous tissue caused by the loss of neurons or glial cells in the brain or spinal cord. Common types of diseases include Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease (also known as Alzheimer's disease), Huntington's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, etc.

At present, there are more than 300 million people suffering from Parkinson's disease in my country, and more than 20 people have ALS. It is even reported that the number of people with Alzheimer's disease has exceeded million. With the intensification and expansion of the elderly society, there is a high incidence and high prevalence, and the situation is dire. People are worried.

"Yes, I really hope that one day these immortal cancers can be cured."

Jin Dong nodded and said.

"Compared with the effort to develop drugs to repair the nervous system, for example, in-depth research on technology to directly regenerate nerve cells, technology is actually more reliable than drugs."

Zhao Sheng said meaningfully that technology can be in the hands of developers. After all, technology has a threshold, but there is the possibility of abuse of drugs.

As for technology, there are thresholds, especially the technologies developed by Zhao Sheng and Jindong. Currently, they can only be controlled by the developers.

Once a certain drug is developed, perhaps the developer's original intention is good, but when the drug is actually put into the market, there will be some situations that even the developer did not expect, and there will be various ways that make the developer surprised. Abuse of drugs in unexpected situations.

Rational use of drugs can cure diseases and save lives, but abuse can turn drugs into deadly drugs. The consequences of drug abuse are not limited to the user, but often have adverse impacts on communities and the environment.

The medical name for drug abuse or drug addiction is substance use disorder, which refers to a chronic and relapsing brain disease in which the patient is unable to control the use of legal or illegal drugs, resulting in physical harm.

Substance use disorders affect a person's brain and behavior, conditioned in the brain to experience the pleasure associated with taking drugs. Drugs, as external stimuli, activate the reward system in the brain to secrete dopamine and other substances that make people feel happy, causing users to feel pleasure and strengthen their willingness to take it again.

To put it simply, the more effective a drug is, the more dependent it will be on patients and individual groups. Some people even abuse drugs and take advantage of the side effects of drugs, causing extremely serious damage to the body.

"I think so too. On the one hand, developing drugs requires a lot of investment, takes a long time, and involves great uncertainty. The subsequent clinical use is not a problem that can be solved by just two people."

Jin Dong nodded. On this point, he fully agreed with Zhao Sheng.

Developing a certain technology can still cure a certain disease. The negative impact caused by this kind of personalized technology is actually much smaller.

But when it comes to drugs, there will be such a problem. The development cost of many drugs is very high. As a result, when the drugs are put into use, they may even cost hundreds of thousands or even millions per injection.

Once this happens, it is a difficult choice between life and money.

When Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong develop a certain treatment technology, the cost is actually much lower and the difficulty is much less than developing a universal new drug.

(End of this chapter)