The photos on the podium had a great impact on Yang Rui.

Severe thalassemia is a very serious fatal disease, and because it is a hereditary disease, it will cause extremely terrifying harm to extremely young children.

Pale complexion and dysplasia will appear in the first few months. Then, compensatory hyperplasia of bone marrow will make the bones bigger. The metacarpal bones, ribs and long bones are just one of them. The changes in the skull will make one-year-old children unique. The raised forehead and cheekbones, the collapsed nose bridge, and the widened distance between the eyes will make anyone feel unbearable and uncomfortable after seeing it.

The enlarged liver and spleen and other internal organs deposited by iron elements cause internal organ damage and externally bulge the abdomen of the skinny children, making the whole person look like a terrifying zombie in the movie.

If it is just a photo, or a difficult and complicated disease that Yang Rui doesn't understand, it will not make Yang Rui's mood fluctuate.

However, in Yang Rui's knowledge system, although thalassemia has not been cured, it has a great possibility of being controlled.

Modern medicine does not have the power of traditional medicine, and there are actually very few diseases that modern medicine can cure. For most diseases, the goal of modern medicine is to control rather than cure.

If patients with severe thalassemia who are less than 20 years old can increase their lifespan by 10 years, or even increase their lifespan, while improving their quality of life, then severe thalassemia will turn from a terrible disease to a terrible disease.

Among them, increasing lifespan is only one of them, and the most important thing is to improve the quality of life of patients.

Nowadays, patients with severe and medium-sized thalassemia need long-term blood transfusions. In order to remove the iron enrichment produced by long-term blood transfusions, they need to inject iron amine for a long time. Think about it, a child has to be injected with blood transfusions frequently and often injected drugs. What does that feel like when other children are in kindergarten, children with severe thalassemia have deformed their whole body and have no complete skin on their bodies.

The deferrosterone mentioned by Yang Rui cannot completely replace the effect of deferrosterone, but one thing is very important. Deferrosterone can be taken orally and has a stronger potency. Although it cannot solve the problem of patients requiring long-term blood transfusion - this requires bone marrow transplant - it can solve the problem of patients' long-term injection of drugs.

So, for this improvement, is Yang Rui worth investing in the development of thalassemia drugs?

The development of any drug is not a simple matter. There are so many pharmaceutical companies all over the world, how many drugs are available in European and American countries every year? With the United States as the benchmark, it is usually a double-digit number below 50, and sometimes there are only more than a dozen.

In the United States, where biological companies have exceeded 10,000, pharmaceutical companies have exceeded 10,000, and pharmaceutical companies all over the world want to land in, there are only double-digit new drugs on the market every year. It is conceivable how difficult it is to develop a new drug.

Perhaps the development itself is not difficult for Yang Rui, but the first phase clinical trial, second phase clinical trial, third phase clinical trial and approval from the FDA or the Drug Administration are not easy.

Even a super pharmaceutical company like Pfizer has to shed more than one layer of skin when conducting a round of clinical trials of new drugs, and the painful process of peeling often lasts for three or even ten years.

Is it worth it?

In terms of reason, Yang Rui actually believes in the importance of basic research.

For example, for drugs for treating thalassemia, the development of deferrosteramine depends on the discovery of iron chelating agents, which is a natural product extracted from the fermentation broth of streptococcal bacteria and a joint research result of microbiology and biochemistry. The deferrosterone proposed by Yang Rui, as he said, was also the long-term research on carboxypyridone compounds that led to the production of related drugs.

As for Yang Rui himself, the research on ion channels he made in advance, PCR, or the research on interacting proteins, G proteins in the laboratory, and even cloning groups that have not yet officially started will produce countless important drugs in a time of varying lengths. In terms of past experience, these important basic research can fully affect the world for 50 or even 100 years.

It can be said that if Yang Rui focuses on basic biological research, he can create greater value, play a greater role, and lay the foundation for more people to solve their illnesses.

But in terms of feelings, Yang Rui could not easily convince himself.

He did not devote all his energy and time to scientific research, and even the part he devoted was not used to do basic research.

Therefore, it is not appropriate to just discuss greater value and greater role.

Or, leave the research and development of deferrosterone to others?

Yang Rui gave up just after thinking about it.

If it is done by others, then you have to do research and development in a regular manner. In other words, in addition to Yang Rui’s clinical trials and drug access system for headaches, you also have to spend more energy on drug development.

Historically, when was deferrosterone available?

March 1995.

Since the discovery of hydroxypyridone compounds as a new type of iron chelating agent with good effect in 1982, it took another 13 years for Indian pharmaceutical companies to complete drug research and development and clinical trials.

After 13 years, how many patients with severe thalassemia can wait to get deferrosterone?

In fact, 13 years is not enough, because 1995 is the date of launching deferrotonin in India. It will take two or three years to approve the market by the European and American drug supervision departments, and another five years to go to China. This is already accelerating the future.

In other words, if Yang Rui did not do it himself and instead used it to others, the appearance of deferrosteroids would not be too early, and it might be five or six years ahead of time, but for Chinese patients, they still have to wait for a lifetime.

Yang Rui felt unbearable.

His thoughts were chaotic.

Is it worth it? Yang Rui asked himself more than once.

If you talk about benefits, it is definitely not worth it.

Although removing ferrosterone can make money, it takes so much time and energy. If it is worth the same, Yang Rui can use the same time and energy to make countless times the money.

But people cannot talk about interests purely. The reason why Yang Rui chose scientific research rather than business is because he did not talk about interests purely.

Between the balance of interests and feelings, Yang Rui usually chooses the middle-left route, but this time, it seems to be the middle-right station.
Chapter completed!