C27

　”I’m afraid not, the substance I’m going to extract is a drug catalyst. I’ve already reached a preliminary cooperation with some drug companies, so the ingredients and production steps have to be kept secret.” Li Zheng said helplessly.

Xu Mingsheng was just stunned at the news, a drug catalyst? Drug companies? Was that what he understood it to mean?

He took a deep look at the young man in front of him, “Good, then I’ll wait at the entrance of the lab.”

Li Zheng nodded to Xu Mingsheng, then turned around and entered the lab.

“Dean, you really don’t want to go in and watch? Even if the professors were experimenting, they wouldn’t hide it from others. Could there be something strange about it?” Zhang Kuan couldn’t help but speak up.

Xu Mingsheng didn’t speak for a long time as he looked at Li Zheng’s upright back. It was obviously so unbelievable, but somehow, the moment he saw this young man, he was somewhat convinced. On this young man who called himself “Li Zheng”, he felt the same self-confidence and superiority as that of the Nobel Prize nominee Rosen Kamodo, who had just visited Hong Kong University not long ago. Kamodo had the same confidence and sense of superiority.

“Didn’t he say that? The ingredients and steps have to be kept secret, so we’ll just wait.” Xu Mingsheng calmly walked to the side of the room.

Xu Mingsheng’s heart was far from as calm as he appeared to be. From his background as a frontline doctor, he naturally knew the role these pharmaceutical companies played in the global pharmaceutical industry, and most of the price tag of every drug in circulation now, especially the conventional and unconventional drugs that were urgently needed for urgent, serious, and chronic illnesses, was to be turned over to the pharmaceutical companies for patent money.

They were like gold swallowing behemoths, constantly extracting money from the state and the public. But could you blame them? Couldn’t. Because they invested huge sums of money every year in research on new drugs, and it was these new drugs that kept coming out that would take mankind further and further in the fight against disease.

There weren’t many people in Hong Kong University who could publish papers in journals like Microbiology, but they were mostly at the stage of theoretical discourse, and there were only a handful of them that could actually turn into productivity and be looked at by pharmaceutical companies. Xu Mingsheng carefully recalled that the last time a pharmaceutical company expressed concern and invested money, it was a “digestive enzyme” extracted by Professor Zhang Qu’s laboratory, which was already five years ago.

If this young man really wasn’t lying, Xu Mingsheng took a deep breath to restrain his excitement, then their Hong Kong University, no, he should say the Hong Kong University School of Medicine was about to bring out a golden phoenix!
　　
　　To publish a paper in Microbiology, or related to drug catalysts, it must be a student of their medical school, and Xu Mingsheng didn’t think in the slightest about the possibility that Li Zheng was not a student of Hong Kong University. Because those who could publish SCI papers in Hong Kong either had their own labs or attached labs, how could they come to a public lab to do experiments. Only students who hadn’t stepped into society yet and didn’t have social resources would come here.

Hong Kong Medical School was worthy of being a medical research department comparable to the University of Tokyo’s medical department, even if it was a public lab, the centrifuge was imported from Germany, and there was also this glass tube of reagents with English words affixed to the plastic seal, which Li Zheng shook, the quality was extremely high.

But the nordin catalase was the simplest and easiest catalyst to synthesize that he could find from countless catalysts, and it could be made with the most basic reagents. Li Zheng picked out a few tubes of the reagents he needed from the freezer, looking at the upper part of the freezer that was four square with only a few tubes of reagents missing, his brow furrowed, then he reached out and moved all the reagents out of the freezer.

As a precautionary measure, he was better off being careful.

After doing deoxygenation of a few tubes of reagents, they were put into a glass vessel according to a certain ratio, heated at high temperature, atomized and crystallized. Seeing the familiar light blue crystals appearing in the glass test tube, Li Zheng had a smile on his face, he looked at the time, an hour and fifteen minutes, the smile on his face narrowed a bit. If it was his former self, he should have been able to do it in forty-five minutes.

Li Zheng looked around and didn’t see any light-avoiding brown glass bottles. He didn’t care, he casually took a clean clear glass bottle from the table and wrapped black tape around its body, then used tweezers to carefully clip the blue crystals into the glass bottle.

With a pair of tweezers, Li Zheng carefully wiped all the utensils and tables he had used with alcohol, making sure that no trace of the experiment was left. Immediately, he poured all the reagents that were taken from the freezer and not used into the sink and rinsed them off.

Only after this was done did he gracefully exit the lab, as the lunch break was nearing its end.

The moment the lab door opened, Xu Mingsheng and Zhang Kuan quickly got up and waited at the lab door.

“Mr. Xu, have you been waiting?” Li Zheng appeared appalled.

Xu Mingsheng was startled because of how Li Zheng addressed him, he thought that Li Zheng should call him Professor Xu or Dean Xu.

“Although I’m old, I’m curious. A technology that can take money from foreigners, I’d like to see it too.”

Li Zheng lost his smile, there was nothing to hide, “The catalytic enzyme of Dannodin can increase the yield of Dannodin crystals.”

Xu Mingsheng sucked in a breath of cold air, he naturally knew the status of the drug Dannodin in the pharmaceutical industry, and this young man in front of him really surprised him time and again.

“Has the contract been signed yet? What price? Which company did you sign with.” The words were asked, and Xu Mingsheng realized that he seemed to be asking too many questions, many of which already involved personal privacy.

Li Zheng didn’t mind though, he was always very patient with an old-timer.

“It hasn’t been signed yet, both Roche and Pfizer have submitted good faith contracts, but the final price can only be decided after the actual trials on the production line.”

With this question and answer, Xu Mingsheng had already believed nine points of Li Zheng’s words, if not for his own experience, how could he, a fledgling student, explain the routines of those pharmaceutical companies so clearly.

The good faith contract, nicknamed the “money gift contract”, was unique to the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry was a special industry, the price was cheap, no one else was in their way to win. But those standing at the top, how could they bend down to go to the pharmaceutical company’s name laboratory work, so in order to play well with these money cows, these pharmaceutical companies were also worried.

They didn’t care about the large sums of U.S. dollars they sent out, Cold Spring Harbor, not to mention, Stanford, Columbia, the University of Tokyo, these kinds of university pharmaceutical laboratories with output, every year there were pharmaceutical companies lined up to send money.
　　
　　Therefore, as long as they evaluated scholars and labs that they deemed valuable, these pharmaceutical companies would never be stingy with dollars, with a view to making good relationships before these calves grew up and facilitate future cooperation.

Li Zheng, a name that had never appeared in the biology industry, would naturally attract the attention of these pharmaceutical companies. Compared to the already accomplished bulls, this kind of talented fledgling calf was the pharmaceutical company’s favorite, and they could pay the least amount of money to tie these stars of tomorrow to their chariot.

On that day, Daniel brought over three good faith contracts, and the last one placed in front of Li Zheng’s table was the most generous one. If the catalase test was successful and achieved the expected results, Pfizer would pay a one-time payment of twenty million US dollars to purchase the catalase production method. If the catalase test failed to achieve the expected results, the price would be reduced as appropriate. Regardless of whether this cooperation was reached or not, Pfizer would spend half a million US dollars as a personal research sponsorship for Li Zheng, with no strings attached.

The good faith contract offered by David was also similar.

In other words, even if Li Zheng didn’t succeed in extracting the catalase, one million US dollars would still lie quietly in Li Zheng’s account. This was the charm of knowledge.

“I’m proud that our academy can produce a talent like you. It’s not easy to deal with foreign capital, do you want the school to step in and look out for you?” Xu Mingsheng said with a smile.

Next Monday was the school’s January meetup, and Xu Mingsheng’s mouth grinned wide open, such an excellent student! He could already imagine the envious and jealous faces of the other academies when they heard this news, it made him happy to think about it.

Li Zheng blinked his eyes and looked at Xu Mingsheng who was looking at him with a kind face, finally realizing that this senior had misunderstood something. He scratched his head, “I’m grateful, but Mr. Xu, I’m not a student of Hong Kong University ah.”

“Eh?!” The glass on the table was knocked to the ground, Zhang Kuan looked at Dean Xu who was red and breathing heavily, really worried that the old man was overstimulated and would faint.

Not a student from Hong Kong University! Not a student at Hong Kong Medical School! Xu Mingsheng’s head was buzzing, and the envious and jealous gazes of his old friends that he had just imagined in his mind instantly turned into mocking sympathy.

Ouch, his old heart!

“What school are you from?” Is there a better school in Hong Kong than Hong Kong University? It was gone! Xu Mingsheng was even thinking in his heart, if those schools behind Hong Kong University, he would be risking his face to snatch up this student!

Li Zheng looked at Xu Mingsheng’s excited appearance and his mind moved. Although with the letter, he would be able to do it sooner or later, but if a respected old-timer like Xu Mingsheng were to appear, it would save a lot of trouble.

And when his lab was built, the amount of scientific research he could take out would increase, and it would be impossible for this not to attract attention. Regardless of whether it was Roche or Pfizer, it was just a matter of interest after all. He needed one side of the force to shelter him, and the University of Hong Kong was almost the best choice.

“Mr. Xu, I won’t lie to you, I came to Hong Kong with my family, only to encounter something bad halfway through. Now, I don’t even have a legal status, let alone a university. Hong Kong University is the university of my dreams!”