PAT ARRIVED AT LIFEGEN FOR A PROGRESS update on their work and was greeted by Henri Ducros.
‘So what’s new?’ he asked with false bonhomie. In reality he was in a hurry, pressed for time, in more senses than usual.
‘There’s a lot of work what with the thousands of plant species we have to cross-reference.’ He was eminently qualified to speak, a leading botanist specialised in plant biology and pharmacology
‘Really.’
‘Just a tiny percentage of this botanical bounty has been exploited for medical purposes,’ he recalled, ‘and yet it represents the vast majority of medicines produced by science and industry today. In all 74% of medicines are derived from plants, 18% from fungi, 5% from bacteria, and 3% from animals such as snakes or frogs.’
Pat smiled humouring him, he had heard Henri’s story more than once.
‘Take places like Central America, for example the Guanacaste conservation area which is situated in north-west Costa Rica, it’s one of the richest biotopes on the planet. Apart from jaguars and spider monkeys, its the tropical forests, which range from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean, the conservation area is an incredible reservoir of flora and fauna waiting to be studied by medical science, an incredible source of wealth to be preserved for posterity.’
‘I’ve been to Costa Rica on many occasions,’ said Pat dryly. ‘Let’s pass onto our research.’
LifeGen used different biotechnologies to model complex diseases, test new promising new molecules extracted from plants and carried out research that could lead to the discovery of new treatments for people with age related diseases.
Certain of its technologies frightened some people, these included genetically engineered mice that have partly human immune systems and produced human antibodies which could be used in a cocktail to fight cell degeneration.
‘Starting with we know about NDGA?’ added Pat getting down to business.
Michel Morel appeared and joined them as they went into the meeting room.
‘In our last briefing,’ Michel said, looking over the top of his glasses, wondering if Pat ever read anything they sent, ‘we mentioned the different NDGA derivatives that we're working on.’
‘Oh, so have you discovered something new?’ retorted Pat, skeptical in spite of his manner.
‘Well, discover is not the word, as you know it’s an extremely complex subject. That said, we have found a very small naturally occurring plant molecule that irreversibly binds to the end of the telomer chain in healthy cells, protecting the cells and lengthening the telomeres, without uncontrollably copying them as what happens in cancer cells. In other words healthy cells, as opposed to cancer cells, can continue controlled division forever … at least in theory.’
‘So what does that mean?’
‘Immortality my dear Pat, immortality!’
‘So where does this new molecule come from?’
‘Well as I mentioned it’s small, very small, and is present in one particular variety of the creosote plant, like NDGA, but so small it was never detected before. Thanks to your friend Steve Swarz, we were able to make considerable progress using their new Cryo-Electron Microscope at Montpellier.’
‘Swarz?’
‘Yes, Pierre’s friend.’
‘Of course, Steve.’
‘He called it Galenus-1.’
‘Galenus?’
‘Yes, Galenus was an ancient Greek physician and Telephus his friend was a grammarian who lived to be 100 years old.’
‘Hmm.’ Pat wasn’t too up on ancient Greeks.
‘Yes, we used their Cryo-Electron Microscope combined with their supercomputer simulations we can get to near atomic-level detail.’
‘Great,’ exclaimed Pat perking up.
‘It looks promising Pat,’ Henri told him. ‘NDGA and Galenus-1 are extracted from the leaves of this particular creosote plant identified in the Wallace Codex, it's part of the Zygophyllaceae family of plants that include trees, shrubs or herbs.’
‘It’s an unknown variety then?’
‘As far as we know, according to Luis Gutierrez there’s around 285 species in the Zygophyllaceae family. So it’s been a long business testing samples, looking for Galenus-1, a process of trial and error.’
‘It would be nice if there was some short cut,’ Pat said in forlorn hope.
‘There is,’ Henri paused for effect, ‘we have synthesised the molecule.’
‘That’s fantastic,’ said Pat brightening up, ‘And how did you do that, remember I’m not a scientist.’
‘To tell the truth there’s nothing new, historically all civilisations like the Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, Aztecs and Mayas, unconsciously used syntheses to produced their different needs, extracting and mixing plant, animal and mineral ingredients to produce food, medicines, dyes, and make tools and weapons, even though they didn't understand the processes.
‘Today, we do the same thing, but we have a better understanding of the processes that we use to make medicines to replace scarce biologically active natural substances.
‘A well-known example is anti-cancer properties of Taxol originally isolated from Taxus brevifolia, the Pacific yew tree. The scarcity of the naturally produced molecule in the tree led to its ultimate laboratory synthesis.
‘Here in LifeGen, in practical terms we use a lab scale cryogenic reactor, the quantities of the molecules, that is active substance, we need are very very small.’
They led Pat to a laboratory where a mass of stainless steel pipes, plastic tubes and instruments surrounded a separation column and a cylindrical reactor vessel, all of which were set in a metal framework together with an instrument panel.
‘There we are Pat, a cryogenic synthesiser, that’s what we use to produced Galenus-1.’
He presented a small transparent plastic flacon and shook it. It contained a small quantity of what looked like fine brown sugar.
‘There, these are the kind of crystals that are produced by this reactor.
‘The different active ingredients are mixed together to carry laboratory tests and tests on animals.’
‘When will we have results,’ said Pat, becoming serious, pressing the scientists, his scientists, after all it was his company.
‘Three or four months,’ Morel replied a little uneasily.
‘I’d like to see something sooner, mid-August,’ Pat said, it was not a suggestion, but a veiled order.