357: Chapter 357 Problems in New Drug Research

Zhao Yang leaned back against his chair, his gaze lingering on the attribute panel for a moment.

He felt extremely satisfied; he had only been reborn for a little over three years, yet his panel had already become incredibly impressive!

This was all well-deserved, a result of his own hard work!

After letting out a soft sigh, Zhao Yang looked at the two remaining optional mission cards he had: one gold-level and one diamond-level.

He thought for a moment and decided to use the gold-level one first.

"Use gold-level reward mission card."

The pale blue light screen unfolded once again, and three lines of text appeared before his eyes.

[Optional Mission 1: Peaches and Plums Everywhere. Within one year, have at least three students or team members personally mentored by you receive national-level academic awards or higher, or one person receive an international-level academic award. Reward: Free Experience Points + 100,000, Random Skill + 1.]

[Optional Mission 2: Cornerstone of Industry. Lead the research and development of a brand-new material capable of large-scale industrial production within one year, with core performance indicators improved by at least fifty percent compared to similar current products. Reward: physique + 3, Special Blueprint + 1.]

[Optional Mission 3: The Pinnacle of Interdisciplinary Studies. Publish a Chinese research paper in a Chinese core journal with a word count of no less than 200,000 words. Reward: Linguistics experience + 100,000, Random Lucky Draw Chances + 5, inspiration burst card (30 minutes) + 1.]

After reading through these three options, Zhao Yang raised his eyebrows slightly.

Mission 1 was somewhat aligned with his current situation. He had Zhou Hao and that group of young people from the aero-engine research group under his guidance, as well as a few Doctoral Students from the Peking University Department of Mathematics who occasionally came to ask him for advice; these people already had a solid foundation.

If he gave them a push at key junctures, it wasn't impossible for them to win a national-level award. However, the "within one year" time limit was a bit tight; the review cycle for academic awards was always measured in years, and it would be very difficult to get three people to win in such a short time.

The idea for Mission 2 was also good. He had just verified the ten-ton production line for high-strength carbon fiber at the New Materials Department. Although that project had been classified as top secret and could not be used to complete the mission, with this experience, developing another high-performance material for civilian use shouldn't be too difficult for him.

But Mission 3 was even more interesting... Publish in a Chinese journal?

Zhao Yang's expression became slightly strange.

On the system panel, there were a total of six disciplines.

It seemed he hadn't published any papers in Linguistics, nor had he conducted any serious research in it...

In terms of the system's missions, truth be told, Mission 3 had the most generous rewards.

A full 100,000 points of Linguistics experience!

Five random lucky draws!

And even an inspiration burst card!

You can never have too many of these!

After a moment of silence and a series of changes in his expression, Zhao Yang gritted his teeth!

"Select Mission 3!"

Zhao Yang thought silently to himself.

Let's get Linguistics up to Lv5 first!

Based on the system's previous behavior, upgrading to Lv5 would unlock a branch skill, and that kind of thing was always pretty good!

"Ding, selection successful!"

After hearing the system prompt, Zhao Yang closed the system panel, leaned back against his chair, and began to think about that gold-level mission: developing a new drug with an effect no lower than the spark stimulant without relying on system power.

As for publishing in a Chinese core journal, Zhao Yang decided to put it on hold; it wasn't very urgent.

Once he had determined the research and development path for the new drug, he would then think about the Chinese research paper.

The core mechanism of the spark stimulant was to forcibly block the reception of fatigue signals by neural synapses while simultaneously stimulating a peak secretion of adrenaline in the brain, allowing the user to enter a state of high focus and abundant energy for two hours.

After the drug's effect wore off, the nervous system would fall into deep exhaustion due to the previous forced blockage, making the user extremely prone to entering a high-quality Deep Sleep, thereby completing a full physical recovery within four to six hours.

This kind of therapeutic effect could be described as very elegant: first, it forcibly overdraws, and then it compensates with high-quality sleep. It ensured high-efficiency output in the short term without damaging the body in the long term. This was also the core reason why the spark stimulant was able to crush all traditional stimulants and sleeping pills in the global market.

If he wanted to develop a new drug with an effect no less than that, he had to find another set of drugs with amazing efficacy and no toxic side effects.

This was not easy!

Thinking of this, Zhao Yang stood up, walked out of the study, and took the elevator down to the basement.

The lights in the basement were as bright as always. He walked through the physical and chemical analysis area and the materials testing area, finally stopping in front of the observation window of the biochemical experimental area.

Through the glass, rows of cages held experimental white mice and rabbits. The automatic feeding and water changing piping system above the cages emitted a faint humming sound.

The row of cages furthest inside was the SOD2 Mutant experimental group; this batch of white mice had been raised in the laboratory for nearly half a year, their exercise endurance data consistently maintained at over 1.7 times that of the control group, their serum reactive oxygen species levels remained low for the long term, and there were no abnormal deviations in their organ indices or blood biochemical indicators.

Zhao Yang stood in front of the observation window, staring at that row of SOD2 Mutant white mice on the innermost side of the rack for a long time.

These white mice had been raised in the laboratory for nearly half a year. From the first batch injected with the SOD2 Mutant protein until now, he had reviewed the data from every round of exercise endurance testing.

The endurance duration of the experimental group consistently maintained at over 1.7 times that of the control group, serum reactive oxygen species levels remained low for the long term, and there were no abnormal deviations in organ indices or blood biochemical indicators.

What satisfied him most was that long-term toxicity observation had been conducted for over three consecutive months, and no abnormal physiological fluctuations had appeared.

This meant that the long-term safety of the SOD2 Mutant in mammalian models already had quite solid data support.

He turned around and walked to the main console, pulled out the chair, and sat down. Shin-chan's voice came from the speakers: "Master, you have been standing in front of the observation window for quite a long time. Do you need me to pull up the latest data summary for the SOD2 experimental group?"

"Pull it up."

Several summary charts quickly popped up on the screen, including the exercise endurance curve for the twelfth week, the trend of serum reactive oxygen species levels, as well as the weight growth curves for each group of white mice and a comparison table of organ coefficients.

Each data point had the statistical significance of the difference between the experimental group and the control group marked in different colors by Shin-chan. Zhao Yang's fingers slid across the touchpad, flipping through the pages. The data was very clean, with no abnormal values and no outlier samples that needed to be excluded.

But having animal experimental data alone was not enough.

The SOD2 Mutant and ACTN3 recombinant genes in his own blood were produced after multiple enhancements by the system; besides the increase in physique points, there were also the various system drugs he had used.

Every time his physique increased by one point, there was an additional layer of optimization at the genetic level.

These optimized genes produced corresponding functional proteins after expression; previously, he had extracted these proteins, injected them into white mice, and then observed a significant increase in antioxidant capacity and enhanced exercise endurance.

What if these functional proteins were synthesized and injected into the human body?

What kind of result would there be?

But... human experimentation...

Thinking of this, Zhao Yang frowned slightly; although testing on white mice showed no toxicity, applying it to the human body was a completely different situation, and who knew what would actually happen?