Coming out of the testing room, Zhu Yong's mood was still very good.

"Director Zhao, Professor Jin, the current focus of the ministry is on sports repair."

"As for other research, in general, the ministry and the group are supportive, but it can't affect the general direction."

Zhu Yong said to Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong again.

His words have been made very clear, as long as the two of them do a good job in sports repair, attract the world's top athletes to come here for treatment, and build this place into a world-class sports repair center, then the projects and resources applied by Zhao Sheng and Jindong will be completely different.

As managers, Zhu Yong, Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong have different ideas.

Zhu Yong's desired project and research direction is naturally the kind of technology that produces the greatest benefits in the shortest time, such as tendon repair technology.

But Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong are thinking more about how to bring long-term well-being to more patients.

"Okay, Minister Zhu."

Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong nodded together, this is something that the two have discussed together.

Zhu Yong left satisfied, Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong, and then came to an independent laboratory.

As soon as you enter the laboratory, the first thing that catches your eye is a very sci-fi scene, in a large columnar petri dish, showing a picture of neural tissue growing according to a specified structure.

This is the nerve repair technology that Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong are developing based on the inspiration of stem cell tendon repair technology.

The raw material of this nerve tissue is extracted from a firefighter who has been a high paraplegic for more than ten years, and when the nerve tissue grows, a transplant operation will be carried out to replace the necrotic nerve tissue on the firefighter's body.

It can be said that in the world, nerve repair is an unsolvable problem, and Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong can be said to have taken a big step.

If the blood vessel is broken, it can be anastomosed, and when it is regenerated, as long as the broken part is healed.

However, a nerve fiber has only one nerve cell, and after it is broken, the dendrites or axons of the nerve cell are completely dead, and the myelin sheath is anastomosed.

New synapses start from the neurons in the spinal cord and slowly grow and crawl outward, that is, although only one point is broken, the entire nerve has to be regenerated.

Therefore, Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong simply extracted nerve cells from the patient, redifferentiated and grown, and then transplanted them back into the patient's body.

Unlike other body systems, the nervous system has a very limited ability to renew and repair.

The mammalian nervous system is fully established from the middle stage of fetal uterine development until early postnatal life, after which no new neurons are produced.

The main difficulty in repairing nervous system damage is that other cells of the nervous system, such as glial cells, will do everything possible to hinder the regrowth of axons; There is also the immune component of the nervous system, including star gum, gum microglue, and oligodendrocytes, which secrete cytokines to further prevent nerve regeneration.

The method developed by Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong is equivalent to bypassing these restrictions and directly regenerating.

"Senior, as long as the clinical application of nerve regeneration is effective this time, stem cell therapy can be used in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases in the next step."

Zhao Sheng looked at the nerves that were slowly growing in the glass column in front of him, and said to Jin Dong with some emotion.

Degenerative diseases of the nervous system are chronic progressive degeneration of central nervous system tissue due to the loss of neurons or glial cells in the brain or spinal cord. Common types of diseases include Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, etc.

At present, there are more than 3 million people suffering from Parkinson's disease in China, more than 200,000 people with ALS, and more reports that the number of people with Alzheimer's disease has exceeded 10 million.

"Yes, I really hope that one day, these immortal cancers can be cured."

Jin Dong nodded and said.

"Compared with the painstaking development of drugs to repair the nervous system, such as in-depth research on the technology of direct regeneration of nerve cells, technology is actually more reliable than drugs."

Zhao Sheng said meaningfully that technology can be in the hands of R&D, after all, technology has a threshold, but there is a possibility of abuse of drugs.

In terms of technology, there is a threshold, especially the technologies developed by Zhao Sheng and Jindong, at present, they can only be in the hands of the developers.

Once a drug is developed, the developer's intentions may be good, but when the drug is actually put on the market, there will be situations that even the developers did not expect, and the drug will be abused in a variety of situations that the developers did not expect.

Rational use of drugs can cure diseases and save lives, while abuse can make drugs deadly. The consequences of drug abuse are not limited to users and often have adverse effects on communities and the environment.

The medical name for substance abuse or addiction is substance use disorder, which refers to a chronic recurrent brain disorder in which a person is unable to control the use of legal or illegal drugs, resulting in physical harm.

Substance use disorders affect a person's brain and behavior, allowing the pleasure of taking drugs to form a conditioning reflex in the brain. As an external stimulus, the drug activates the reward system in the brain to secrete dopamine and other substances that make people feel happy, causing the user to feel happy and strengthen the willingness to take it again.

To put it simply, the better the effect of the drug, the stronger the dependence on the patient and individual groups, and even some people abuse the drug by taking advantage of the side effects of the drug and causing extremely serious damage to the body.

"I also think so, on the one hand, the development of drugs is a large investment, a long cycle, and there is a lot of uncertainty, and the follow-up clinical use is not a problem that two people can solve."

Jin Dong nodded, on this point, he very much agreed with Zhao Sheng's opinion.

The research and development of a certain technology can also cure a certain disease, and the negative impact caused by this individualized technology is actually much smaller.

However, in the case of drugs, such a problem will arise, and the development cost of many drugs is very high, resulting in hundreds of thousands or even millions of injections when the drugs are put into use.

Once that happens, it's a tough choice of life or money.

For example, the cost of developing a certain treatment technology like Zhao Sheng and Jin Dong is much lower and less difficult than developing a certain universal new drug.

(End of chapter)