Chapter 332 - 228: Cheers! Lead Compound Screening Successful

To surprise everyone later, Zhang Heng continued to officially run the project under the name Entecavir. In reality, he had secretly replaced the key component and planned to give everyone a major surprise when the results came out.

He especially wanted to earn Wu Ting's admiration and congratulations.

...

...

「Time slowly passed.」

Several months had passed since Pfizer's new drug entered the market. Many patients had already taken it and seen significant results.

The Hepatic Tumor Surgery department at City First Hospital had also introduced this new drug, and its doctors began to use it in clinical practice.

Wu Ting encountered the drug in his work as well.

Looking at the new drug's information leaflet, Wu Ting couldn't help but feel a sense of admiration.

The last time he had seen Xu Kunlin, the First Scientist of the Jin Pharmaceutical Group's Jin Country Research Center, an entry had dropped from him: Pharmaceutical Insights for Sorafenib (Purple)!

Back then, the new drug still had significant side effects. It was a semi-finished product with severe toxicity, completely unsuitable for the market...

He never expected they would make a breakthrough and complete the approval and launch process in such a short time.

Under normal circumstances, no one would question the Southern Country FDA's certification, of course. Wu Ting simply admired how efficient and formidable Xu Kunlin's team was.

However, given his unfamiliarity with the new drug, Wu Ting wasn't prepared to use it in his clinical practice yet.

In contrast, there was the Jin Pharmaceutical Group's Yangzheng Xiujie Pill. The entry Wu Ting possessed for it told him the drug was a mild Chinese patent medicine with no toxic side effects. While its efficacy wasn't particularly dramatic, its strengths were its safety and gradual, steady effects.

Just as Wu Ting finished examining a patient with early-stage primary hepatitis B, he received a call from Jia Jun.

Her voice on the other end of the line was brimming with excitement.

"Director Wu, great news! Fantastic news! Our team found the lead compound that perfectly meets all the requirements!"

Hearing Jia Jun's call, Wu Ting was pleasantly surprised. 'Even though I knew this lead compound existed, I can't believe they screened it out so quickly.'

Once the lead compound was found, they could start publishing their first paper and move on to preclinical studies.

This was a major milestone in the drug's development.

Needless to say, this achievement was also a massive boon for the future of the Jin Pharmaceutical Group.

After handing off his duties at the outpatient clinic, Wu Ting immediately went to the laboratory on the second floor.

When they saw Wu Ting enter, all the researchers rose to their feet in a show of respect. 'If not for Director Wu's design and concept, how could we have possibly found this lead compound so smoothly!'

An ecstatic Jia Jun led Wu Ting to a computer, practically skipping with the joy of a little girl.

This was the happiest Jia Jun had been since the Yangzheng Xiujie Pill project.

When Pfizer crushed the Yangzheng Xiujie Pill, she had been under immense pressure and took the blow hard. She had refused to accept defeat in her heart, but her opponent was Pfizer, backed by a world-class R&D team.

She knew that on her own, she stood no chance. But now, Wu Ting had given her an opportunity to fight back.

And now, they had taken the first solid step.

'The world's only new drug with the potential to cure primary liver cancer caused by hepatitis B!'

"Director Wu, look. Following the framework you designed, we obtained a total of 6,110,340 compounds that fit the Fengmu Tiada theoretical model. We then sorted them by pharmacophore score from highest to lowest and selected the top 100."

Jia Jun was beaming with pride as she presented the data. This perfectly demonstrated the advantages of their advanced molecular dynamics model, and it was all thanks to the Discovery Studio 3.5-build 3D database tool that Wu Ting had improved!

It had increased the efficiency of the entire screening process by several hundredfold!

On top of that, Wu Ting had purchased the updated ZINC15 database—the world's largest compound database—which was designed by the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at Southern Country Jianing University's Moyin Mountain Branch. This greatly increased the comprehensiveness and precision of their results!

Jia Jun continued her demonstration.

"As per your recommendation, Director Wu, we used the CDOCKER docking method—which is optimal for reproducing the ligand-receptor binding mode in the 4UXL complex—to dock the top one hundred compounds with the 4UXL receptor protein one by one..."

"We found that compound number 75 accounted for eight of the top ten highest-scoring conformations. You can see the highest-scoring conformation in this diagram..."

"...Throughout the entire 500 ps process, the overall energy of compound number 75 in its bound state with the 4UXL protein fluctuated between -80,156.10 and -81,259.50 kcal/mol. The system temperature fluctuated between 294.623 and 305.527 K. The fluctuations in temperature and system energy during the simulation... We can see that the binding energy between the 297-amino-acid receptor protein and compound number 75 shows little fluctuation, which indicates that the initial state established by the simulation is relatively stable."

After delivering the entire analysis in one breathless rush, Jia Jun excitedly announced to Wu Ting:

"Director Wu, we have not failed the mission you entrusted to us! We've found the lead compound for 'Fengmu Tiada'—it's compound number 75!"

"Director Wu, we did it!"

The room erupted in cheers!