Chapter 1453: Chapter 1081: How Big of a Place is Needed for the Office Chapter 1453: Chapter 1081: How Big of a Place is Needed for the Office NK cells’ recombinant construction has been completed. Yang Ping provided over a hundred recombinant schedules for NK cells, it’s not possible to recompose all of them at once, Lin Lan only recomposed the highest priority NK cells, the rest will be completed in batches.

The recomposed NK cells’ seed cells are sent to the cell therapy laboratory to begin cultivation. Compared to viruses, cells have much higher safety, especially since NK cells are naturally immunocytes of the human body.

Human immunocytes include lymphocytes and other phagocytes, where lymphocytes consist of T lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, K lymphocytes, and NK lymphocytes; among them, NK lymphocytes are relatively few.

The primary targets of NK cells’ lethal attacks are tumor cells, virus-infected cells, larger pathogens like fungi, and parasites, also capable of killing cells of same-species allogenic transplanted organs or tissues. Their surface receptors can recognize polysaccharide molecules expressed on the surface of virus-infected cells, then release toxic molecules mediated after activation, such as perforin, granzymes, and tumor necrosis factor, etc.

Yang Ping is currently embedding the K factor into NK cells after dismantling it, naming these cells K-NK cells, which means NK cells embedded with the K factor. These cells have prolonged survival and very precise recognition of tumor cells, with significantly enhanced lethality to tumor cells because the dismantled K factor has become an antibody acting as a navigator and a factor initiating tumor cell apoptosis.

The entire process of the K-NK cell therapy is quite costly, as all the steps are brand new, making the costs higher than those for CAR-T cell therapy.

Cell therapy is expensive because the technology is highly complex, like CAR-T cell therapy. Current market-approved CAR-Ts are autologous CAR-Ts, which reengineer a tumor patient’s own T cells to specifically kill cancer cells within the patient’s body. It is a cellular therapy, differing from small molecule drugs, and traditional macromolecular drugs; it utilizes genetic engineering to alter cells, hence it’s also gene therapy; it produces using the patient’s own cells, regarded as custom-made drugs, which cannot be mass-produced. These factors contribute to the extremely high technical demand of CAR-T cell therapy, and subsequently, high costs.

NK cell therapy is even more complex technologically. Simply put, the first step requires separating a large amount of NK cells from the patient’s body using leukocyte separation technology; the second step involves genetically modifying the separated K cells to express chimeric antigen receptors or receptors derived from the K factor, enabling NK cells to specifically kill certain tumor cells. This step uses specific viral vectors to transfer the embedded genes, and since the engineering scale of NK cell production is vast, the cost of viral vectors is extremely high. The third step lets these NK cells proliferate to a sufficient number, that is, undergoing laboratory cultivation. Only completing all these steps can produce NK cells ready to be transfused back into patients for treatment. Each step requires specific laboratories to complete, demanding high technical and equipment standards, and the entire production process follows very high safety standards, which also increases the cost. Overall, this type of experiment burns through a lot of money and is typically unsustainable for most people.

Currently, three top-tier laboratories are cooperating to complete this experiment, the scale of which is rare worldwide. Yang Ping is like a marshal commanding a large troop in battle, while Tang Shun, Lu Xiaolu, Lin Lan are the generals under his command. Yang Ping needs to coordinate everything, ensuring not a single detail is missed, so that the experimental goals can be reached as quickly as possible.

Now, due to the need to expand the cell therapy laboratory, the demand for a building suddenly increased. After Yang Ping reported this to Dean Xia, Dean Xia immediately treated it as a top priority.

Sanbo Hospital Meeting Room.

Dean Xia and other leaders are discussing the hospital’s expansion. There is still an eight-story building at Sanbo Hospital that is currently being used as the animal lab.

Dean Xia is considering moving that building for Yang Ping to use as a laboratory, converting all eight floors into labs to help relieve the current space shortage. But after emptying that building, where to relocate the animal lab? It’s impossible to mix the animal lab with the scientific research labs; those pigs make such a stench daily, while the labs require strict cleanliness and sterility.

“We still have a lot of empty land, right? We could build a few more buildings. Before the new buildings are constructed, we could temporarily set up a light steel building or a prefabricated house in a corner for the animal lab. The animal lab doesn’t require high standards; it’s basically just a slightly better pig farm,” Dean Sun, who is currently in charge of logistics, suggested.

“All eight floors kept for labs leaves no room for other departments to expand, like the Sports Medicine Center, Trauma Orthopedics, Trauma Emergency Center, Oncology, Plastic Surgery, General Surgery Department, and so on. We are already lacking in beds. Can’t we allocate half for clinical departments?” another vice dean frowned.

“No, cell labs require extremely high standards of cleanliness and sterility. They absolutely cannot be mixed with clinical departments. It’s also inconvenient for management,” Dean Xia rejected the suggestion.

“What should we do then? Building a new structure isn’t a matter of one or two days. We never expected the hospital to develop so quickly. For example, the growth of General Surgery and Plastic Surgery was completely unexpected. Director Fang and Director Lan have mentioned this to me several times, and I’ve been holding back because the only vacant building we have, we want to reserve for Yang Ping,” Dean Sun said worriedly.

“For now, one eight-story building should temporarily suffice for Yang Ping, but it definitely won’t be enough later. Cell therapy labs need several floors, stem cell experiments and other cell labs must be separate, and there’s also clinical wards for cell therapy, an international clinic for cell therapy, a separate administrative area, etc. Tang Shun’s lab alone would need at least five or six floors, and Lu Xiaolu would need two floors, so that’s seven floors gone. We can’t allocate any floors from here to other departments,” Director Han, the deputy dean currently in charge of operations, actually did not want to be any dean, but reluctantly took on the role to help Yang Ping.

“Let those clinical departments hold off for now,” another vice dean said.

“If all else fails, we can clear out the entire administrative building and set up a temporary office in a light steel or simple prefab house on an empty plot. The administrative building, as long as it keeps out the wind and rain, is fine. It doesn’t need any tough conditions. Once the new building is ready, we can move in,” Dean Xia thought of a good solution after pondering for a long time.

Dean Sun said, “If so, we can temporarily manage.”

Dean Xia waved his hand decisively, “Then let’s do that, quickly build the prefab, get a three-story prefab done, and we’ll have our offices. We can allocate this entire administrative building to those clinical departments. Let’s all just endure a bit longer. What do offices need? Just a room with a desk, phone, computer is enough. The requirements aren’t high.”