I Am Diagnosed as a Medical Titan

Of course, Jiang He was seriously considering it.

It was certainly a good opportunity, one that could potentially accelerate his research.

The trade-off, however, was a potential loss of freedom.

He was already in Southern China, where he had built his own team and established his standing at both the university and the hospital.

Venturing north like this would mean giving up too much.

After mulling it over, Jiang He gave a slight bow.

"Thank you for your faith in me, Academician Zheng. Your lab is the dream of countless medical students. However, I’m still just a third-year undergraduate at Southern Medical University and haven’t completed my foundational courses. Furthermore, I’ve grown accustomed to the clinical pace in the emergency and hepatobiliary surgery departments at Affiliated Hospital No. 1. I’d like to plant my roots firmly here before I pursue more advanced, cutting-edge work."

A flicker of surprise crossed Zheng Liyan’s eyes, followed by an appreciative nod. "Very well. Since you’ve decided to stay in Southern China, you should proceed at your own pace. But after this LNR paper is published, what’s your next step? You can’t let your research momentum stall."

Jiang He replied, "I’m preparing to advance research into the application of miRNA for early-stage pancreatic cancer screening."

As soon as he finished speaking, the atmosphere in the lounge shifted.

Zheng Liyan’s brows furrowed slightly.

Lin Zhenhua set down his teacup.

Yang Xu’s expression also grew heavy.

Everyone present was an elite in the medical field. They knew exactly how monumental a challenge was represented by the two phrases "miRNA" and "early screening" when put together.

In 2008, the clinical application of genetic testing and molecular biology was still in its earliest exploratory stages.

"miRNA?"

Academician Zheng said, "Jiang He, are you aware that I have a friend, Professor Vogelstein’s team at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, who is currently working on a similar project? They have the best sequencers in the entire United States and millions of dollars in dedicated funding from the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. Even with all that, they’re still bottlenecked on the extraction stability and clinical specificity of circulating miRNA. Their progress is slow."

Those were words that couldn’t be spoken without a certain level of status and perspective.

Everyone present adopted a serious expression, listening as Academician Zheng continued:

"He’s discussed it with me. This project is a bottomless pit. You’ll be facing a massive sample bank, unstable technical roadmaps, and a colossal consumption of funds. You’re just a third-year undergraduate. Taking on a world-class scientific challenge like this could easily dull your edge. I don’t advise you to compete with top international teams in this race."

This skepticism was born entirely of goodwill—the protectiveness of a titan in the field toward a promising junior.

He didn’t want to see such a promising talent break himself on an impossible task.

Noticing the tense atmosphere, Principal Qian quickly stepped in to smooth things over. "Academician Zheng, Jiang He’s project actually passed its preliminary review at the university’s pre-screening meeting a few days ago. The university is very supportive of our young people’s innovative spirit. We’ve promised to provide his team with a dedicated laboratory and allocate two hundred thousand in start-up funding."

"Two hundred thousand?" Minister Lin shook his head. "Principal Qian, while I may not be an expert on this project, I know that in genetic research, two hundred thousand isn’t even enough to cover imported reagents and consumables, to say nothing of the subsequent clinical trials and data analysis."

Yang Xu also looked at Jiang He.

Although he had championed his student at the pre-screening meeting, he was equally aware of the difficulty. He said, "Jiang He, the leaders are right. Honestly, with the foundation you’ve built with LNR, you could easily continue along that path. You could work on prognostic analyses for other digestive tract tumors. You’d get results quickly, and it would be a much safer bet."

Faced with a room full of medical magnates questioning and trying to talk him down one after another, Chen Hao, who was listening from the side, couldn’t help but gulp.

The guy was great at getting the gist of things. In short: the project Jiang He wanted to do was next to impossible, a massive cash drain, and even an academician wasn’t optimistic about it!

Jiang He, however, remained perfectly calm.

He had, in fact, already considered everything the professors were saying.

His gaze was steady as he said:

"I know about the work being done at Johns Hopkins. I also know that tackling early screening for pancreatic cancer head-on can’t be accomplished overnight. That’s why I’ve broken the project into phases."

"For the first phase, I plan to work on a sub-project: the early prediction of severe acute pancreatitis, or SAP."

"SAP has a rapid clinical onset and progresses quickly. We can leverage the emergency department’s sample bank at Affiliated Hospital No. 1 to screen for just two or three specific miRNA targets. By combining these with existing inflammatory markers, we can establish a lean, fast predictive model. This sub-project would have a short timeline and provide quick clinical feedback. Once we get it working in the emergency department, it can be immediately translated into a clinical pathway."

Zheng Liyan’s brow remained furrowed as he listened.

Even creating a predictive model for a single disease like SAP was still an immense challenge.

He still couldn’t believe a team of students could pull off something so world-changing.

"Then... what about funding and a facility?" Lin Zhenhua asked. "Principal Qian’s two hundred thousand won’t be enough to see this model through to completion."

Jiang He knew the answers perfectly well.

Funding? He had the two million Wang Kuan had just transferred, which would be more than enough to cover initial expenses after some bottom-fishing in the stock market.

A facility? Zhou Guanglin, the vice president of Hujun Group, had already arranged a 300-square-meter vacant factory space for him in the High-Tech Zone.

As for the technical bottleneck that had stumped Johns Hopkins University, it wasn’t a dead end at all for Jiang He, who possessed the top-tier research perspective of someone from twenty years in the future.

But he couldn’t just lay all his cards on the table. It would make him seem far too arrogant.

So he cracked a joke, "As for the money, Chen Hao is planning on sponsoring me."

Chen Hao asked, "Huh? Me?"

Jiang He smiled, then continued, "Just kidding. In reality, I have a new concept for reverse extraction. The idea is to intervene before the blood sample settles and stratifies. If we can implement it my way, the costs might be manageable."