Surgery Godfather

Chapter 2184: Chapter 1432: Can They Converge? (Part 3)

He wrote an email to Weber: "The data is out, better than we imagined."

Weber went back to Germany, and he replied: "I’ll be back next week, continue working."

This time Weber came with an unexpected person—his wife, Alina.

Alina is a retired pediatric doctor in her seventies, with short silver hair, speaking gently but firmly. When she appeared at the institute’s door, everyone was stunned. Weber had never mentioned he had a wife, much less expected to bring her to the laboratory.

"Alina wants to see M7," Weber said simply, "She watched the rough cut of the documentary and is very interested in the monkey."

"Just interested?" Manstein quietly asked Yang Ping.

"Not just interested," Alina seemed to overhear, turned her head, "I was a pediatric doctor for forty years and saw many children lose mobility due to illness or accidents. I’ve seen the look in their parents’ eyes. M7’s eyes are the same as those of kids striving to stand up in the rehab room."

She walked to the front of M7’s cage, squatted down, and looked level at M7. M7 gazed at her, tilted its head, and then extended its hand.

Alina took M7’s fingers and shook them gently. M7 made a low sound, like a purr or hum.

"What is it saying?" Alina asked.

"It’s saying ’thank you,’" Fritz answered beside her, "or ’hello.’ M7’s language is simple, with only a few syllables, but each syllable has meaning."

"You can understand it?"

"Not entirely," Fritz said honestly, "but I can feel it."

Alina smiled, and that smile made the wrinkles on her face soften. She turned to Weber and said, "Carl, you were right, this place is indeed worth working at."

Weber’s face blushed slightly, this was the first time Manstein saw him embarrassed.

The joint treatment plan for M7 officially started in the second week after Weber’s arrival.

This was the crucial point of the entire project. No matter how good the data from the mice was, it was still just mice. M7 is a primate, and its spinal structure, immune response, and neural plasticity are closer to humans. If M7 succeeds, clinical trials on humans would be just a step away.

The surgery was performed by Yang Ping as the chief surgeon, Manstein assisted alongside, and Eva was responsible for intraoperative electrophysiological monitoring. Tang Shun and Hans were in the preparation room next door, guarding those two precious tubes of cell suspension—one tube was the inducer factor activating the original cells, one tube was exogenous neural stem cells, and another tube was FG-3019.

"Are you ready?" Yang Ping asked.

"Ready." Everyone answered in unison.

M7 was anesthetized and lay prone on the operating table. Its back was shaved clean, revealing pink skin. Yang Ping used a surgical knife to make a longitudinal incision at segment T8, exposing the vertebrae plate. Then he carefully removed the plate using a high-speed drill, exposing the dura mater.

"The dura mater is intact," Yang Ping reported, "Ready to cut."

He switched to a more delicate surgical knife and made a T-shaped incision on the dura mater. The spinal cord was exposed in the view, gray-white, with small blood vessels pulsating on the surface.

"The injury site is here," he pointed to a dark red area on the dorsal side of the spinal cord, "about three millimeters long, half-cut depth."

Weber leaned closer to the microscope, observed for a while, then nodded, "Consistent with imaging, ready to begin transplantation."

The first tube of inducer factor was slowly injected around the injury site. Yang Ping used a special micro-injector, the needle diameter was only 0.3 millimeters, to minimize mechanical damage to the spinal cord. The pale yellow liquid spread out on the surface of the spinal cord, like a drop of ink in clear water.

The second tube was then exogenous neural stem cells. These cells were suspended in a thermosensitive hydrogel, rapidly solidified after injection, forming a three-dimensional scaffold. Yang Ping’s movements were slower, controlling each microliter precisely. The green cell suspension glistened under the microscope, like flowing jade.

The third tube was FG-3019. This time, Yang Ping didn’t inject directly into the spinal cord, but into the epidural space around the injury site. His rationale was: CTGF is primarily secreted by fibroblasts under the soft membrane during the late stage of scar formation, and epidural administration could create a slow-release reservoir that takes effect in the third week, precisely matching the time window for scar maturation.

The surgery lasted for an hour. When the last stitch was completed, Yang Ping straightened his back and let out a long breath.

The first two weeks post-surgery, M7 was placed in a special rehabilitation cage. This cage was twice the size of the original, with non-slip mats on the floor and soft guards around. Fritz spent six hours daily with it, grooming, providing water, and doing passive joint activities.

M7’s condition was unexpectedly good. It started eating on the second day after surgery, rolling over in the cage on the third day, and attempted to support its body with its arms on the fifth day. These signs surprised Eva, as she had participated in several primate spinal surgeries before and typically took over a week to recover basic activities.

Yang Ping sat in the office, looking at the drawing he made on the whiteboard. If there truly exists a mechanism behind, integrating stem cells with three-dimensional guiding genes, there’s a lot to study and many laboratories need to participate.

The Germans now study only a small part of the field, merely approaching the theory from a stem cell perspective.

Meanwhile, Tang Shun’s team at Sanbo is starting from the three-dimensional guidance gene theory, and many other teams around the world are joining in intermittently, from their field of expertise.

Whether they can converge, no one knows.

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