Li Zheng found that he seemed to be famous, walking on the way to class, people would point at him from time to time, and many little girls covered their mouths and ran past him.
Li Zheng frowned, in his last life he had three original drugs for cancer, and was called “a banner of China’s pharmaceutical industry” by Xinghua News Agency and the world media, but even so, no one recognized him on the street.
The scientific research industry was so far away from the lives of ordinary people, few people paid attention to the dynamics of this industry.
He walked into the classroom with doubts, and just after stepping through the door, a loud applause was heard in the classroom.
“HERO!”
“HERO!”
The students shouted in unison, their young faces filled with excitement and pride.
“Li Zheng, you are fantastic! I hereby declare that the Li Zheng Special Disease Research Foundation is established, and all the income from the patent will be donated to the foundation, may our tomorrow be free of disease! So handsome!” A handsome looking male student hooked his arm around Li Zheng’s neck and repeated his speech at the conference with great emotion.
The students immediately surged up and scrambled to speak to Li Zheng. The University of Hong Kong as the highest school in Hong Kong, many students were rich, many students said on the spot that they’d donate money to Li Zheng’s foundation, the amount mentioned wasn’t small.
Li Zheng helplessly rubbed his temples, the students were too emotional, he simply couldn’t intervene. When the students slowly calmed down, Li Zheng smiled and said, “I appreciate the kindness of the students, but Li Zheng Special Disease Research Foundation does not accept external donations for the time being.”
Foundation was a very sensitive word, it could accidentally lead to controversy. There had been many examples in later generations where many individual foundations were set up to do charity, but later became tools for some people to enrich themselves due to mismanagement or management greed.
Accepting foreign donations meant trouble, and Li Zheng didn’t like trouble.
The class bell soon rang, and the crowd returned to their seats.
“What was the part-time job you mentioned last time?” Li Zheng was writing an application, which he had proposed to Xu Mingsheng on the plane; it was too much of a waste of time to go to a freshman’s class with his academic level.
Xu Mingsheng didn’t even think about it and agreed to it, the inventor of an original drug, this title was too loud and let Li Zheng go to class. He was at an academic level similar or even higher than theirs, on the podium they trembled, fearing that they would say the wrong words and lose face. Xu Mingsheng felt that even if Li Zheng did not mention this, the teachers in the class would take the initiative to bring it up.
Li Zheng was halfway through writing his application when he suddenly felt a light tap on his back.
He turned his head and saw a ball of white paper on the ground.
Picking it up and opening it, it was Zheng Lingling, “What was the part-time job you said last time, was it related to the experiment?” Every biopharmaceutical student had a dream of a laboratory.
And the laboratory dog was a very strange creature, the laboratory abused them a thousand times, yet they treated the laboratory as their first love. Zheng Lingling was only a freshman, her grades were also general, in addition to classes, she simply didn’t have the opportunity to enter a laboratory.
White coats, transparent glass test tubes, beautiful reagent colors, life-saving drugs born under one’s hands, how wonderful was that! Zheng Lingling’s eyes were glowing with light.
Zheng Lingling remembered the invitation Li Zheng extended to her last time, her mouth was grinning towards her ears, Li Zheng must be discerning and saw her potential in the profession!
“Of course it works, your ability to coordinate the big picture is excellent and you have an extremely strong sense of responsibility, I think you are very suitable to be the big steward of my lab.” The note returned the way it came.
Big! Steward! Housekeeper!
Zheng Lingling slumped helplessly on the table, what about her professional potential, it really was her illusion.
But soon, Zheng Lingling got up in spirit. The environment affected a person, maybe she could stay inside the laboratory more like a future biology bull.
OK
Zheng Lingling gave an OK gesture to Li Zheng.
Li Zheng finally understood why so many people looked at him on the way, he was a biological scientist on the headlines of the entertainment section.
“Li Wenhui’s fans hurt an old professor from the University of Hong Kong!” The cover photo of a magazine called Xiangjiang Entertainment Weekly was the picture of Li Wenhui surrounded by paparazzi and Professor Wang almost falling down.
This reporter captured the picture well, contrasting the anger of the scholars present at the time with Li Wenhui’s star-studded appearance. The whole article was condemning, standing on the moral high ground to attack the status quo of the entertainment industry, holding the Hong Kong University line up to the highest level.
In addition to introducing several old professors with blinding titles, the article also spent a considerable amount of time describing Li Zheng, a biopharmaceutical genius and the light of original medicine in Hong Kong. Because the magazine published a side of Li Zheng’s face, the people of Hong Kong suddenly found that there were also scientists who were so handsome.
The news of Li Zheng’s performance at the Biopharmaceutical Conference was re-discovered a few days ago, and Li Zheng’s name instantly became a genius in the scientific research world known to the mothers and fathers in the streets.
Of course, fame was one thing, but because of the blurred photo, only those who knew Li Zheng could match the name with the person.
Was it him? Li Zheng remembered the young reporter he saw under the tree at that time, and couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. The other way around, really a smart kid.
“Bang Bang Bang” the classroom door was suddenly knocked and Xu Mingsheng walked in with a grim face.
The professor on the podium paused, “Director?”
Xu Mingsheng nodded, he swept around the classroom, and when he saw Li Zheng, he walked towards him with big steps.
“You still have the heart to attend class, something happened! Come with me to the lab.”
Li Zheng looked at the watch in his hand, class ended in five minutes, and he smiled apologetically at the professor on the podium before following Xu Mingsheng out of the classroom.
Xu Mingsheng’s face could be described as ugly to the extreme, “This matter is my responsibility to say the least, I let you publicly present the paper at the conference, and now ……”
Xu Mingsheng felt that he was simply ashamed to face this student of his, “An Indian pharmaceutical company preempted the launch of a generic version of the drug, slightly changing the composition of the drug and also went to register a patent.”
“Just this?” He blinked and looked at Xu Mingsheng’s distressed expression, he thought something big had happened.
When the molecular formula of the drug was disclosed at the conference, he had expected this possibility. The application of drug patent was a very professional thing, around an original drug, they may generate dozens or even hundreds of patents, the molecular formula and crystal patent that Zhang Yuejun applied for that day, was only the most basic two.
It had been four days since Li Zheng announced the molecular formula, which was enough for a drug laboratory to conduct countless drug experiments, thus verifying the feasibility of this molecular formula and evolving the corresponding generic drug from it.
Unlike ordinary generic drugs, this generic drug successfully bypassed the patent of the original drug, and legally, even Li Zheng, the inventor of the original drug, had no right to order it to stop infringing.
This kind of patent grabbing had been seen time and again in the history of pharmacological development. The most profound one for Chinese people should be the “Artemisinin” incident, in which Ms. Tu, the first Chinese woman to win the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine, was the discoverer of “Artemisinin”. However, the patent of “artemisinin” was taken by foreigners.
The annual sales of artemisinin and its derivatives amounted to 1.5 billion dollars, but Ms. Tu and China had nothing to do with it, which was the cruelty and exclusivity of patents.
As for India, it was an oddity in the pharmaceutical industry. The Indian Patent Office compulsorily licensed the Indian pharmaceutical industry to produce generic drugs. The Indian patent law “protected only the pharmaceutical process, not the composition of the drug.” This had made drug copying a commonplace in India.
Li Zheng, as the owner of the patent rights of the original drug, should have abhorred the Indian pharmaceutical industry. But, sometimes he quite admired the Indians.
Some people had to do something, even if they had a bad reputation.
China was also struggling from poverty and hunger, from a backward country to a world power, this road was very difficult to walk. For example, how many Chinese people couldn’t afford to buy medicine now? The reason why Chinese people used to be scared of cancer was that they couldn’t afford to buy expensive anti-cancer drugs, and once they had cancer, all they could do was die.
Cancer wasn’t scary, it had entered the list of chronic diseases of the United Nations long ago, as long as the proper treatment was carried out, cancer patients could completely live with tumors for a long time.
Indian generic drugs were only one tenth of the price of Novartis, Pfizer, Bayer original drugs, but the efficacy was very guaranteed. The former UN Secretary General said “Indian generic pharmaceuticals have become the pharmacy of the third world during the transition period”.
“That’s it? Your drug is not yet available, the generic is coming out, and that’s all you have! Xu Mingsheng was so angry that he blew his beard and glared, he could not wait to open Li Zheng’s head and see what was in it!
“Teacher, what process does it take for a drug to come out?” Li Zheng didn’t answer Xu Mingsheng’s question, but asked this.
Xu Mingsheng was stunned by his question, “You still need to ask me that.”
“Four clinical stages, then just follow the international standards and come out with a drug report.”
“Yes, four clinical stages, and the main treatment is for infantile frozen blood disease. I think I’ve talked about this topic for a long time.”
Xu Mingsheng’s footsteps froze, the shock on his face was difficult to hide, he looked at Li Zheng with the gaze of staring at an alien.
“You …… you wouldn’t be …… doing this on purpose, would you?”
Li Zheng guffawed, “Deliberately? I’m not that generous, just some things I don’t want to get my hands on, it is necessary for others to get their hands on. Since they want to bypass my patent, to make their own production. Then they should help me with the clinical stages, it’s not too excessive.”