director (in title at least, Dolan's employee) about the aborted Lentidra trials. Casting nervous glances across the lab through the two glass walls into the test-subject suite, he waited for Huang's head of shiny black hair to appear. It was early--6:00 A.M. early. Any Beacon-Kagan employees (and that meant any Vector employees) who didn't want to wither in the corporate culture started their days before their days.
Huang finally swept into view, wearing his knapsack, an accessory--like the Trek twenty-one-speed he "commuted" on--that Dolan had always thought an affectation of youthfulness. Dumping the knapsack onto his desk, Huang tugged his lab coat from his chair back and slipped into it, completing his transformation into authority figure. Sipping a Starbucks, he pulled himself to his monitor.
Dolan stood, trying to override unease with indignation. Why shouldn't he confront Huang? After all, wasn't it Dolan's company? Vector Biogenics wouldn't exist were it not for him. As the father of the process and the senior scientist, wasn't he entitled to a few simple information requests?
He started for the door, muttering to himself, drawing curious gazes from the junior researchers. His resentment flared, putting an uncharacteristic conviction into his step. He gowned up and passed into the baking heat of the production room, a massive incubator where thousands of bottles rotated slowly on racks lining the walls. Made of polypropylene, a plastic on which cells readily grow, the roller bottles were filled with a red medium liquid. This growth fluid created a wet environment for the genetically altered smallpox to reproduce. In the batch currently spinning all around Dolan like living wallpaper, a mere three days into production, the virus had already swollen the cells and begun to bud out of them. A few more days and the production team could pour out the infected liquid and filter it. Once the Xedral was purified, it could be formulated, dispensed into vials, and freeze-dried, just like a standard vaccine. After that, just add purified water and inject.
Dolan stepped into the airlock, then out into the test suite, the monkeys grunting and banging their cages in greeting. With relative ease, Dolan had designed a viral vector to "knock out" the AAT gene, so that Huang could create an animal test group that simulated humans with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (destroying--especially when it came to genetics--was always easier than repairing). Rabbits, mice, pigs, and woodchucks had all come and gone before Huang hit upon cynomolgus macaque monkeys, whose clinical presentation of the deficiency was sufficiently comparable to that of humans to make them useful in determining the effectiveness of Lentidra and Xedral. Simple intravascular injections, like flu shots, were administered, and thirty-six hours later the test monkeys no longer had functioning AAT genes. Their livers started to shut down; they lost weight; their sclera yellowed. Dolan had created the problem to fix it. And fix it he had.
How permanently his viral vectors could keep that fix in place was another question. The recovery of the monkeys had been staggering to witness. An added advantage in using higher animals was that the trials could continue longer; it wasn't until the eighth month of L12-AAT's second trial that Huang had caught the complications that had made the board pull Lentidra from development.
Dolan arrived at Huang's side, but the study director continued tapping at the keyboard, the monitor's glow reflected back in his glasses. "Just a sec, D."
Waiting, Dolan offered a salute to Grizabella, and she bared her teeth kindly and returned the gesture. One of 128 composing the final longitudinal Xedral study, Grizabella was the gentlest and (on those rare occasions when Dolan ventured into the test-subject suite) his favorite. Huang had started with 130 macaques but lost two to simian hemorrhagic fever, which was common enough in monkeys imported
Huang finally swept into view, wearing his knapsack, an accessory--like the Trek twenty-one-speed he "commuted" on--that Dolan had always thought an affectation of youthfulness. Dumping the knapsack onto his desk, Huang tugged his lab coat from his chair back and slipped into it, completing his transformation into authority figure. Sipping a Starbucks, he pulled himself to his monitor.
Dolan stood, trying to override unease with indignation. Why shouldn't he confront Huang? After all, wasn't it Dolan's company? Vector Biogenics wouldn't exist were it not for him. As the father of the process and the senior scientist, wasn't he entitled to a few simple information requests?
He started for the door, muttering to himself, drawing curious gazes from the junior researchers. His resentment flared, putting an uncharacteristic conviction into his step. He gowned up and passed into the baking heat of the production room, a massive incubator where thousands of bottles rotated slowly on racks lining the walls. Made of polypropylene, a plastic on which cells readily grow, the roller bottles were filled with a red medium liquid. This growth fluid created a wet environment for the genetically altered smallpox to reproduce. In the batch currently spinning all around Dolan like living wallpaper, a mere three days into production, the virus had already swollen the cells and begun to bud out of them. A few more days and the production team could pour out the infected liquid and filter it. Once the Xedral was purified, it could be formulated, dispensed into vials, and freeze-dried, just like a standard vaccine. After that, just add purified water and inject.
Dolan stepped into the airlock, then out into the test suite, the monkeys grunting and banging their cages in greeting. With relative ease, Dolan had designed a viral vector to "knock out" the AAT gene, so that Huang could create an animal test group that simulated humans with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (destroying--especially when it came to genetics--was always easier than repairing). Rabbits, mice, pigs, and woodchucks had all come and gone before Huang hit upon cynomolgus macaque monkeys, whose clinical presentation of the deficiency was sufficiently comparable to that of humans to make them useful in determining the effectiveness of Lentidra and Xedral. Simple intravascular injections, like flu shots, were administered, and thirty-six hours later the test monkeys no longer had functioning AAT genes. Their livers started to shut down; they lost weight; their sclera yellowed. Dolan had created the problem to fix it. And fix it he had.
How permanently his viral vectors could keep that fix in place was another question. The recovery of the monkeys had been staggering to witness. An added advantage in using higher animals was that the trials could continue longer; it wasn't until the eighth month of L12-AAT's second trial that Huang had caught the complications that had made the board pull Lentidra from development.
Dolan arrived at Huang's side, but the study director continued tapping at the keyboard, the monitor's glow reflected back in his glasses. "Just a sec, D."
Waiting, Dolan offered a salute to Grizabella, and she bared her teeth kindly and returned the gesture. One of 128 composing the final longitudinal Xedral study, Grizabella was the gentlest and (on those rare occasions when Dolan ventured into the test-subject suite) his favorite. Huang had started with 130 macaques but lost two to simian hemorrhagic fever, which was common enough in monkeys imported
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