mesbooks Chapter 1428 Get Involved
Chapter 1428 Get Involved
Chapter 1428 Get Involved
The email from the president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research sat in Yang Ping's inbox for three days before he finally received a reply.
It wasn't that Yang Ping was deliberately delaying; he simply didn't know how to respond. "If you have time, I'd like to come to China to discuss this with you in person," said an elderly scientist, nearly eighty years old, a Nobel laureate, and a living fossil of stem cell research worldwide, who has dedicated nearly half a century to the field. He said he would fly halfway around the world to "discuss it face-to-face." This wasn't just polite talk; it was seriousness.
Yang Ping replied with five words: "Welcome, you can set the time."
The other party replied even faster: "Next Wednesday, I will come with two of my students. Please allow me to visit your lab and meet the volunteer."
Yang Ping forwarded the email to Mainstein, whose expression was somewhat complicated after reading it.
"You know him?"
“I’ve known him for over thirty years!” Mainstein leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling. “Hermann Weber, seventy-eight years old, Nobel laureate, one of the founders of the stem cell field. My mentor in Germany knew him very well; I saw him many times at academic conferences when I was young.”
How's your relationship?
Mainstein paused for a moment. "He was my senior, and I have always respected him, but he was never quite satisfied with my...style."
What style?
“So sharp!” Mainstein chuckled, with a hint of self-deprecation. “He believed that science should be rigorous, conservative, and proceed step by step. He thought I spoke too absolutely, criticized others too directly, and drew conclusions too quickly.”
Yang Ping looked at him; this was the first time Mannstein had proactively brought up negative opinions about him. This German never cared about outside opinions, refused interviews cleanly and decisively, and when questioned, he only used data to support his points; many in academia feared him.
Yang Ping nodded. "So, now that he's here, how do you plan to get along with him?"
"Say it the way it should be said. Data is data, and friendship is friendship."
Mainstein picked up his phone and called the rehabilitation training room. Sister Li answered. After Mainstein explained his purpose, there was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, then Chen Jianguo's voice came from afar: "Who? The president of some international society? A Nobel laureate? Come on over. Let him see if Professor Mainstein's methods are effective on me."
Over the next few days, the entire team prepared for the visit. Not for the reception, but for the data. Mainstein compiled all the evidence regarding protocellular repair into a folder: electrophysiological records of M7, immunohistochemical images of M8, single-cell sequencing results of M21, Chen Jianguo's cerebrospinal fluid test report, sensory level decline curves, muscle strength recovery timelines, and standing time variation graphs. Each data point was labeled with the date, conditions, and location of the original data. "Weber wouldn't believe any conclusion without supporting original data. He'd worked in this field for forty years and seen far too much beautifully packaged fake data. What we needed to show him wasn't conclusions, but evidence. Conclusions can be packaged, but evidence cannot."
Yang Ping revised the last part of the review article three more times. The title of the third part was changed from "Future Prospects" to "A Testable Conjecture," and then to "A Unified Hypothesis: Homologous Regulation of Differentiation and Migration." The final version had only one line below the title:
"We propose that cell differentiation fate and spatial location are regulated at the molecular level by the same signaling network. This network coordinates tissue construction during embryonic development and can be reactivated by specific microenvironment signals after adult injury, mediating endogenous tissue repair."
Yang Ping read the passage several times to confirm that every word was one he truly believed, and then saved the document. He intended to share this theory with the world, so he had to be as cautious as possible to avoid misleading the researchers involved.
The visitor arrived on time next Wednesday.
Yang Ping had originally intended to pick him up from the airport, but Weber's assistant insisted against it. "Professor Weber rented a car himself and navigated there; he doesn't like to trouble others," Yang Ping said, and didn't insist further. He had heard about Weber's style; this elderly gentleman, over seventy years old, never traveled with an assistant, always dragging his suitcase in economy class and renting a car to drive to his hotel upon arrival. Some said it was a show, but those who knew him knew that Weber had been like this since his youth—it wasn't a show; he genuinely disliked being served.
At 10 a.m., a black minivan pulled up in front of the research institute. The door opened, and two young people, a man and a woman, stepped out first. They carried backpacks, their eyes sharp, clearly the kind of postdoctoral researchers trained in top-tier laboratories. Then, an elderly man with completely white hair got out. He was short, wearing a gray jacket, and carrying an old briefcase; he looked like any ordinary retired university professor, utterly unremarkable.
Standing in the doorway, Mannstein's posture involuntarily straightened upon seeing the old man. It wasn't nervousness, but respect. Hermann Weber, a living textbook in the field of stem cells. Mannstein had read almost all of his papers and met him countless times at academic conferences, but they had never actually spoken face-to-face more than ten times. Each time, Weber would look at him with a scrutinizing gaze, like a stern teacher looking at a bright but misbehaving student.
“Maninstein!” Weber walked over, extending his hand, speaking not in English, but in German.
“Professor Weber!” Mainstein replied in German, shaking his hand.
The two men's hands clasped for less than a second before disengaging, swift and decisive, without any further emotional exchange. Weber's gaze passed over Mainstein's shoulder and landed on Yang Ping standing behind him.
"Is this Professor Yang Ping?"
“Yes!” Mainstein stepped aside to make way for her. “Professor Yang, this is Professor Hermann Weber.”
Yang Ping stepped forward, extended his hand, and Weber shook it, this time for a longer time. He said in English, "Professor Yang, I have read all your papers. It's a pleasure to meet you. The medical community never expected to produce such a genius as you."
Yang Ping looked at him and said, "You flatter me. I was just a little lucky."
Weber paused for a moment, then laughed: "Chinese people are always reserved and modest."
Weber didn't offer any pleasantries about the weather or the journey. He went straight to the point: "Professor Yang, how confident are you about the conjecture on the last page of your review paper?"
Yang Ping looked at him: "If I answer you now, will you believe me?"
Weber paused again. This was a question he had asked countless times at academic conferences, and the answers were usually "very confident," "preliminary data supports it," or "we are currently validating it"—all platitudes. No one had ever asked him, "Would you believe it?"
“No!” Weber answered honestly, “That’s why I brought two students with me so they could look at the data themselves.”
"Then let's look at the data first."
Yang Ping led Weber and his two students directly to the conference room. Mainstein had already arranged all the data in logical order, from M7 to M8 to M21 to Chen Jianguo, from animals to humans, from acute to chronic to non-targeted. Dozens of charts and photos were spread out on the table, each with a yellow sticky note next to it indicating the date and conditions.
Weber sat down and began looking at the first one. He looked very slowly, spending several minutes on each one. Sometimes he would pick up a magnifying glass and examine the photomicrograph for a long time, then ask the students next to him, "Do you see this?" The students would lean in and nod or shake their heads. Weber would not speak and would continue to the next one.
Standing beside Weber, a strange feeling welled up within him as Weber perused the data. Ten years earlier, at an academic conference in Germany, Weber had told him in front of the audience after hearing his presentation: "Dr. Mainstein, your experimental design is ingenious, but your conclusions have gone too far. Science is not a 100-meter sprint, it's a marathon; running too fast will cause you to stumble."
At the time, Mannstein was very disgusted with Weber, feeling that he was always self-righteous and that he simply did not understand how a genius like himself thought.
Now that Webber is sitting here, he doesn't feel as much aversion anymore.
Two hours later, Weber finished looking at the last image, a photograph of Chen Jianguo's cerebrospinal fluid cytology. He put down the magnifying glass, leaned back in his chair, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.
"Maninstein".
"Yes!" "You certainly have the ability to move quickly."
Mannstein remained silent.
Weber turned to Yang Ping: "Professor Yang, your data is clean. I can't say I completely believe your conclusions, because the word 'believe' is too heavy. What I can say is that your data supports your conclusions. Moreover, your conjectures are very imaginative, at least beyond my imagination."
"But?" Yang Ping said the word for him that he hadn't yet uttered.
Weber glanced at him. “However, your conjectures have not yet been proven. You have seen correlations: changes in the microenvironment are related to protocellular activation, and protocellular activation is related to functional recovery. But what about causality? How can you prove that protocellular activation leads to functional recovery, rather than functional recovery causing some cells to come and join in? Mechanism? That’s the hardest part.”
When Mainstein tried to speak, Yang Ping held his hand down.
“Professor Weber, you’re right. The causal relationship hasn’t been rigorously proven yet. Our next experimental design is to address this issue. We’ll use chemogenetics to specifically remove the activated progenitor cells and see if functional recovery is blocked. If recovery stops after removal, then the causal relationship will be proven.”
Weber was silent for a moment. "How much funding does this experimental design require?"
“Around ten million US dollars,” Yang Ping replied.
"I'll go back and help you find funding."
"No, thank you, we have sufficient funds."
Weber rubbed his eyes. Is China really this arrogant now? He was a little incredulous.
In the afternoon, Weber requested to see Chen Jianguo.
Yang Ping took him to the rehabilitation training room. Chen Jianguo was doing standing exercises, and Sister Li was standing beside him with a towel in her hand. Weber stood at the door without going in, looking inside through the glass window in the door.
Chen Jianguo held onto the parallel bars, his legs trembling slightly but he stood steadily. His gaze was fixed on the wall in front of him, his expression focused, as if he were completing a very important task—standing. Weber watched for about five minutes, then turned to Yang Ping and asked, "How long has he been standing?"
"I first stood independently at 40 weeks post-surgery. Now, at 48 weeks post-surgery, I can stand for about five minutes."
"Damaged segment?"
"Fifth thoracic spinal cord segment, complete injury, eleven years old."
Weber nodded and remained silent for a moment. “Professor Yang, I have a student. Five years ago, she was in a car accident, suffering a spinal cord injury that left her paralyzed from the neck down. She can’t move anything below her shoulders. She was only twenty-four when she was injured, just graduated with her doctorate. She’s still alive and doing research, typing on a keyboard with a stick in her mouth, and has published several papers. She never complains, she never gives up. But every time I visit her, I feel terrible. It’s not that I’m sad that she’s in a wheelchair—she’s not even sad herself—it’s that I’ve done fifty years of research and still can’t help her.”
Yang Ping remained silent.
“Before I came here today, she said something to me. She said, ‘Teacher, go and see if Professor Yang and Professor Mainstein’s theories are true. If they are, I’ll wait a little longer.’” Weber’s voice finally trembled slightly, not very noticeably, but Yang Ping heard it.
Yang Ping looked at him: "Professor Weber, I can't guarantee that your students will stand up. But I can guarantee that we won't stop. It's not about proving who's right or wrong, it's simply about pursuing unknown knowledge."
Weber extended his hand and shook hands with Yang Ping. He turned and walked into the rehabilitation training room. Chen Jianguo saw him come in but didn't let go, continuing to hold onto the parallel bars.
“Mr. Chen, I am Hermann Weber, from Germany,” Weber said in Chinese with a heavy accent but understandable pronunciation. “May I ask you a question?”
"Please ask!"
How long do you stand each day?
"About five minutes."
Are you tired?
"tired!"
"Why are you still standing?"
Chen Jianguo thought for a moment and said, "Because I want to go out, not to go far, but just to walk out, to the door, and to see the sun outside. I've been in a wheelchair for eleven years, that's long enough."
Weber didn't speak, just stood there watching Chen Jianguo finish the last two minutes. Chen Jianguo let go of the parallel bars, and Sister Li came over to help him back into his wheelchair. He took a few breaths, probably to catch his breath.
When Weber came out of the rehabilitation room, Yang Ping and Mainstein were both standing in the corridor. Mainstein was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, his expression calm.
“Maninstein,” Weber said in German.
"exist!"
“I used to say that you were moving too fast, making too many promises, and drawing conclusions too early, but I don’t think so anymore.”
Mainstein remained silent, and Weber continued, “You didn’t go too fast, you went too far. So far that we old folks couldn’t see your back and thought you were going the wrong way. You never went the wrong way, you just didn’t wait for us.”
What Mannstein wanted to say.
“No need for explanations. I’m not apologizing; I’m stating the facts.” Weber interrupted him, then turned to Yang Ping. “Professor Yang, I want to change the research direction of my lab. We’ve been working on the original direction for almost forty years, but we haven’t produced anything clinically usable. I want to switch to your direction.”
Yang Ping looked at him and said, "Your lab, your students, your funding—you're free to decide."
"I've decided to get involved now!"