Surgery Godfather

Chapter 2196: Chapter 1438: I Just Want to Laugh

The recovery of M7 has entered an acceleration phase.

In the eighth week, it can walk continuously for ten meters, its gait is stable, it occasionally stumbles, but it can adjust its balance on its own. In the ninth week, it started to try jogging; although it couldn’t run for more than a few steps before stopping to catch its breath, its lively posture was not much different from that of a healthy monkey. In the tenth week, it began to leap in the cage, jumping from the ground to the lowest perch, succeeding without hesitation.

"Jumping," Eva watched the video, "is a higher-level motor function compared to running, requiring stronger muscle force, better balance control, and more complete corticospinal tract conduction. M7’s ability to jump indicates that its neural network has been reconstructed to a fairly high level."

"Has it fully recovered?" Tang Shun asked.

"No," Yang Ping said, "In primates, functional recovery after spinal injury never includes the word ’complete.’ Recovering eighty percent is already a miracle. M7 has probably recovered sixty to seventy percent now. The remaining thirty percent may take a year, maybe ten years, or maybe never fully recover."

Professor Weber was very happy.

"Professor Yang, I’ve spent my life researching stem cells, published the best papers, and won the highest awards. But the value of all the results in those papers doesn’t compare to the value of this current experiment."

The topic of M7 was written into a paper. Previously, stem cell technology had also been used in spinal injury, and there had been some effects, but they were too small, too uncertain, sporadic.

Now Professor Weber understood that it was because simple stem cells didn’t have much effect on spinal injury repair, their real role was in accelerating original cell repair. That is, the mechanism of original cell repair in the spinal cord must be activated first for external stem cells to take effect. The previous effectiveness arose because the damaged spinal cord area contained a few sparse, extremely tiny original cell repair cells, and these external stem cells had played a certain promoting role.

Yang Ping’s project combined the theory of three-dimensional spatial orientation genes with stem cells, attempting to find a unified theory. A molecular detail in the current project achieved a phased result: In the field of spinal injury, external stem cells have a synergistic promoting role on original cell repair.

The paper was primarily written by Lina and Hans. The two sat in front of a blank Word document for two days and hammered out the first draft. After Professor Weber reviewed it, he revised the title, abstract, introduction, method, result, discussion, and references multiple times, and finally, the paper was published.

Soon, the review comments came back.

Yang Ping was sitting in his office, and on the screen in front of him was an email from Cell. He looked at it for three seconds, then clicked it open.

Three reviewers, two recommending "minor revision," one recommending "major revision."

The major revision’s comments were two full pages, the first point being: "The sample size of primate animals is too small (n=1), questioning the extrapolability of the conclusions. The authors need to supplement data of at least 3 animals or provide a strong theoretical argument as to why a single case study at this stage is sufficiently convincing."

Yang Ping printed out the review comments and drew a line under the first point with a red pen. The line was very straight, drawn with such force that the pen tip nearly tore the paper.

He picked up the phone and dialed Tang Shun’s number.

"Notify everyone, meeting in the Meeting Room in half an hour."

The Meeting Room was full of people.

Professor Weber sat to Yang Ping’s right, in front of him was a cup of steaming hot tea. His reading glasses were perched on his nose, and he held the review comments in his hand, slowly flipping through them, occasionally writing a few words in pencil on the blank spots.

Manstein sat opposite, in front of him was spread the entire dataset of M7 over the past ten weeks, a thick stack divided into different Chapters with colorful tabs. His fingers tapped lightly on that stack of data, like playing a silent piano piece.

Eva, Hans, Lina, and Fritz took their seats one by one. Tang Shun stood in front of the whiteboard, holding a black marker, ready to record.

"Everyone finished reading?" Yang Ping asked.

No one answered. Everyone finished reading, but no one wanted to speak first.

"Then I’ll speak," Yang Ping stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and took the marker from Tang Shun’s hand, "Three reviewers, two minor revisions, one major revision. The core idea of the major revision: insufficient sample size, n=1."

He wrote "n=1" in three characters on the whiteboard and drew two horizontal lines underneath with a red pen.

"The reviewers’ doubts are reasonable; scientifically, n=1 doesn’t prove anything. A monkey can stand up, it could be coincidence, individual variance, a circumstantial exception in surgical procedure—we need repetition, preferably twelve monkeys."

"Twelve primate spinal injury models," Manstein frowned, "With M7, that’s thirteen?"

"One step at a time," Yang Ping drew a table on the whiteboard, six rows and three columns, "First, the source of animals, preferably of the same species as M7. Professor Weber, does your partner unit in Germany have such experimental monkeys."

"Yes!" Professor Weber removed his glasses, "Heidelberg University has the largest non-human primate research center in Europe, with breeding communities of Heng River monkeys and crabeating macaques exceeding a thousand. I can contact them to see if we can share animal resources and facilities in the form of a cooperative study."

"What about funding?" Manstein pursued.

"I’ll handle the funding," Yang Ping said, "My research fund is sufficiently funded, that’s not a problem."

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