I Am Diagnosed as a Medical Titan

Jiang He and Professor Wang walked into the laboratory.

Wang Xiaoqing casually placed the textbook in her hand on the lab bench. Her gaze swept around the room, a touch of melancholy in her eyes.

From the centrifuge to the microscope.

To the rows of glass test tubes, washed until they shone.

And the pipettes...

’It’s all memories.’

She reached out, her hand brushing over the equipment as she said softly,

"After New Year’s Day, starting next year, we won’t be coming back to this lab for experiments anymore, will we?"

Jiang He walked to his workstation, pulled out a chair, and nodded. "Probably not. The factory renovation in the High-Tech Zone is moving quickly. By the time I get back from Hushang, the equipment should be ready for installation and testing. Then, we can move to the new lab and conduct even bigger research."

"Yeah," Wang Xiaoqing murmured.

She pulled her hand back, walked over to the chair across from Jiang He, and sat down. "Jiang He," she asked, "we’re about to start the KRAS project. I’m very curious, how much confidence do you actually have in it?"

Jiang He thought for a moment.

’If this were the future, he’d dare say he was more than ninety percent certain.’

But this was 2008.

’You can’t make bricks without straw.’

’It’s hard to say, really hard to say.’

Jiang He replied, "All I can say is, we’ll have to take it one step at a time."

Hearing this, Wang Xiaoqing actually breathed a sigh of relief. "PHEW... That’s good, that’s good."

"What’s wrong?"

"I was afraid you’d be like you were with the early screening project and just casually say you’re one hundred percent sure you can do it. If you’d said that again, I’d really start to suspect you’re an alien disguised as a human, hiding among us."

"Haha." Jiang He laughed and shook his head. "Actually, I just got pretty lucky. The new methods I came up with before just happened to work out perfectly when we put them into practice."

Wang Xiaoqing clicked her tongue. "If you said that at an academic conference, you know you’d make a whole crowd of researchers keel over from sheer frustration, right?"

Jiang He shrugged. "Nothing I can do about it. I’m already trying my best to keep a low profile."

Wang Xiaoqing hummed in agreement. "For sure."

The moment she said it, she cursed under her breath and grumbled internally, ’The Lin Yue virus!’

She took a breath and then said, "Here’s the thing. I probably won’t be able to participate in front-line experiments anymore. So, could you give me a rundown of your overall strategy for tackling the pancreatic cancer targeted therapy?"

She paused for a moment, then added with certainty, "I have a feeling you already have a direction and a plan, right?"

Jiang He answered immediately, "Yes. I’ve divided the overall approach into four steps: early-stage target validation, lead compound synthesis and optimization, preclinical research, and clinical trials."

He didn’t mention the fifth step—new drug application and commercial mass production—because that fell outside the scope of scientific research and wasn’t necessary to discuss with Wang Xiaoqing.

Wang Xiaoqing asked, "Can you be more specific? For example, the first step, this early-stage target validation. What are your specific ideas?"

"There’s a supercomputer in Hushang. I’m going to apply to use it on this trip. I’ll use molecular dynamics simulation to search for a binding pocket on the KRAS target protein."

Wang Xiaoqing asked again, "And then? What if you successfully find this binding pocket?"

"After finding the binding pocket, we have to start designing compounds, but... according to my experimental plan, the current theoretical support is insufficient. This subfield is still missing three or four core papers."

Wang Xiaoqing’s brow furrowed slightly. "For instance?"

"For instance, pancreatic cancer is predominantly driven by G12D, but G12D lacks a reactive cysteine, making it extremely difficult to target with a covalent drug under the current theoretical framework. Therefore, we must first use G12C, which has a thiol group, as a proof-of-concept breakthrough. As long as we can prove that a covalently targetable allosteric pocket does exist on the surface of KRAS, the ironclad rule of it being ’undruggable’ will be broken. We can then use that as a foundation to further design non-covalent or even more advanced, novel covalent inhibitors for G12D."

Wang Xiaoqing was silent for a moment before asking, "So what do you plan to do? Without those papers, you can’t move forward, can you?"

Jiang He said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "Yeah. So, whatever papers are missing, we’ll just have to write them first."

Wang Xiaoqing: "?"

She couldn’t follow Jiang He’s train of thought for a second.

After a moment, it hit her:

’There it is!!’

’Using that ridiculously casual tone to say the most infuriating lines!’

’It’s Jiang He. Of course, it’s Jiang He!’

If Chen Hao were here right now, he would have understood Wang Xiaoqing’s feelings perfectly.

Back when Jiang He said he would whip up a paper for a top-tier journal in three days, everyone had the exact same thought...

Just as Wang Xiaoqing was about to say something, there was a knock on the lab door.

Yang Xu pushed the door open and walked in. "Honey, are you done chatting? Old Chen pulled me into a meeting, so I got held up. Sorry I’m late to pick you up."

"Yeah, we’re pretty much done."

Wang Xiaoqing stood up, deciding not to ask any more questions.

’I feel like I wouldn’t get a straight answer even if I kept asking.’

’I’ll just end up getting continuously exasperated by Jiang He, and it might even affect the pregnancy... ’

Yang Xu chuckled. "Jiang He, we’re heading out. You should get some rest too."

"Okay. Take care, Professor. I wish you a healthy baby soon~"

"Hehe, I’ll take you up on that."

After the professors left,

Jiang He opened Word and began to recall.

’Heyi Zhiyu, tackling the pancreatic cancer targeted therapy, the prerequisite papers phase.’

After running through one of the papers in his mind,

The typing went very quickly.

Jiang He typed:

"Analysis of the Altered Biochemical Microenvironment and Covalent Anchoring Potential of the Cysteine Residue in the KRAS G12C Mutant"

[Abstract: For a long time, the KRAS protein has been considered an ’undruggable’ target due to its surface lacking the deep binding grooves required by traditional small-molecule drugs, combined with its extremely high, picomolar-level affinity for its substrate, GTP.

This paper aims to break from the traditional R&D paradigm of competitive inhibitors by focusing on a specific mutant subtype: KRAS G12C.