Part 7 (2/2)
”What we noticed was that cancerous cells produce an enzyme that healthy cells do not. This thing, a telomere, is an enzyme which prevents a cell from dividing. So it keeps growing, until it interferes with the body's essential processes. If we could focus on inhibiting telomere production, we could stop this thing, tumors, from growing, without trying to kill them. Our idea is to keep this thing, tumors, at a size where the body can live with them. And manage cancer, the way you manage diabetes.”
Shane blinked. ”That's a pretty radical notion.”
”To doctors, maybe. But not to the body. B cells already produce a monoclonal antibody that targets telomeres and inhibits them. That is what our team discovered. The challenge is, the body does not produce enough of it. So obviously, if we could isolate these telomeres' antibodies, if we could reproduce them in the lab”-he opened his arms-”then we could have a drug that targets only the cells which produce telomeres and leaves the healthy cells alone. With healthy cells alive and functioning, there are none of the side effects to current chemotherapy treatment. No pneumonia, no hair loss, no weakness, the immune system is left whole. Only the tumorous cells are targeted.”
Shane shook his head. Coming from Orco, a company that sold chemotherapy drugs, and then more drugs to address their side effects, this was a revelation. ”I think I'm getting this. It's enzyme profiling.”
Doctor Acharn clapped his hands. This small gesture of joy seemed a complete breaking of his character. In his high-pitched voice he exclaimed, ”Enzyme profiling. Yes. Definitely you are in Commercial for a reason.”
”So, is that what Sorion is?”
”Yes. We cloned the gene that produces this antibody that attacks telomeres. We placed it on to an HIV virus, and introduced it back into the body. The virus carries the new cells through the body where . . .” He noticed the look on Shane's face. ”This thing is a disabled form of HIV. We are not injecting cancer patients with live AIDS-causing organisms.”
”Okay, that's good to hear.”
”HIV is actually a wonderful vehicle for transporting genes through the body. What makes it so terrible to fight also makes it unstoppable in advancing good. Just because it is being used to destroy life does not mean it cannot be used to save it. Everything in nature is a tool, you know.”
”I'm starting to understand that.”
Doctor Acharn was watching him. ”Now maybe you can help me understand something.”
”Sure.”
”This name 'Sorion'? This thing sounds like a whale. What has this word got to do with telomeres?”
Shane grinned. ”That's actually in the PowerPoint.”
He noticed several picture frames on the doctor's desk, but their backs were to him. He wondered what they displayed.
”You should write a book, Doctor.”
”I'm reading one.”
Shane understood; he was talking about the human body. ”How long have you worked here, Doctor Acharn?”
”A long time. I was employee number five.”
”Really? So you know Steven Poulos?”
”My mentor.”
Helixia had been founded by Steven Poulos and Walter Pietrowski, known to the biotech community ever since as P&P, in 1979. Poulos had been a young researcher at Stanford when he isolated and cloned a protein that replicated red blood cells. His lab a.s.sistant had been Prajuk Acharn. When a twenty-eight-year-old venture capital banker named Walter Pietrowski heard about this on the Palo Alto party circuit, he tracked him down. Two months later, they started Helixia as a research boutique.
In 1980, Genentech completed the biggest IPO in history, and Wall Street went insane for any biotech, boutique or otherwise. Eighteen months later, Pietrowski took Helixia public; anyone who stayed a year past that date was in this to save lives. Prajuk was one of them.
Now his eyes darted to one of his monitors. Shane watched his forehead wrinkle and stood up.
”Thanks for your time, Doctor. I do have more questions, things I can work into my sell.”
”These things, e-mail them to me.”
Prajuk extended a hand over his desk. As Shane leaned in, his forearm brushed a framed photograph and almost knocked it over. His face hardening, Prajuk reached out quickly to straighten it.
Helixia's speed and intensity made Orco look archaic.
Shane felt as if he was constantly catching up. Dennis needed him to run a major annual sales conference on Sorion, for which he was vastly unprepared. He spent hours each day introducing himself to oncology practices. Each time he began to type ”alpha-one ant.i.trypsin deficiency” into his computer or phone, his e-mail would sound, a text would come, someone would swing by his cubicle.
And as soon as his workday ended, Janelle would call him from the lobby to attend infant CPR cla.s.s or to hit Babies ”R” Us to pick up some last remaining item. Per Janelle's suggestion, he sent an e-mail to Doctor Dineesh Pawar asking for an appointment, but at the end of the week he had still not received a reply. On Thursday, he blocked off an hour in his calendar and drove to a nearby Peet's to begin some focused research into Lily's disease.
What he found saddened him. Lily's lungs were hyperinflated. It wasn't that they could not take a breath; it was that they could not exhale one. The air the baby inhaled became trapped inside of her, leaving only a sliver at the top for fresh oxygen. The remainder of her lungs were atrophying, unused, gray and shriveled; this produced the chronic wheeze and dry cough he had heard in her room. The condition was irreversible. It led to early onset emphysema, and an unhappy, short life. He quickly pushed the image out of his head, as if some form of transference could spread this disease to his own unmet baby.
For a decade he had wanted Caleb to leave Boulder, but felt selfish and childish each time he considered it. So his brother was living a different life than they all wanted him to, what was wrong with that? There had never been any concrete, objective reason to try to make him leave. Now, awful as it was, he had it. If he could find some test, some treatment, here.
It would take time, ma.s.sive amounts of time, to research this condition, contact specialists, learn things that weren't to be found in online message boards and medical sites. In the car he punched his steering wheel. For a decade, Caleb had run beside strangers, knowing how much Shane would have given to have just thirty minutes with him. And after eleven years of total silence, Caleb had chosen this time, the busiest of Shane's life, to reemerge? Rounding the Embarcadero toward home, he resolved to devote the rest of his night to e-mailing this Doctor Pawar, and tomorrow morning to personally introducing himself to everyone in Immunology.
He opened the front door to find Janelle on their couch, beads of sweat making their way down the smooth skin of her temples.
”Get the car,” she whispered.
Shane ran for her blue gym bag and helped her out to the Civic. Her body felt foreign and awkward, this body he had known for years. At the street she tightened her jaw.
”Are you uncomfortable, or is it real pain?”
”I'm having contractions. Don't be an a.s.shole.”
These words, reverberating into the bones of his fully formed son, hurt him in a new and profound way. Shane brought the seat belt carefully over her belly and drove slowly over the huge hill of Mason Street as Janelle gripped his wrist.
At the hospital, a butch nurse laid Janelle on a cold metal table and attached a fetal monitor. The nurse gave it an odd look, tore the paper from the twitching needle, and walked away without a word. More time pa.s.sed than seemed necessary. Janelle expressed concern, but Shane inhaled easily; there was no problem, because in his life things did not go very wrong.
When the nurse returned, they were taken to a wide delivery room. An epidural was called for, and Shane ordered out of the room. He wandered to the lobby, looking out the window at its glimpse of the Pacific beyond. He called Fred and Julie, and Liu and Hua, whom he had to dissuade from coming immediately over. He considered finding the number of that copy store in Boulder, but he figured Caleb would ask for information about Lily's illness, and Shane had no answer for his failure to obtain any. Tomorrow, he promised himself. He made his way back into the warm room where Janelle lay smiling. A nurse was pointing toward a monitor.
”That green light,” she explained, ”is his heartbeat.”
And Shane was lost in a green bouncing haze. It seemed to him to possess personality, playfulness, eagerness to see him.
”Ready to meet your little boy?”
It was happening so quickly; he would have liked some time to inhale. The doctor instructed him to take Janelle's leg. This he was unprepared for but he felt more connected now, touching his wife's body, feeling the energy burning from it, as she pushed. And some time soon after, he saw Nicholas's head appear facedown, covered in matted, thick black hair. He watched the doctor grasp his son's shoulders and turn his body clockwise, and then in one seamless, sudden burst, this whole being was propelled into his life as if there had never been a moment without him.
Shane looked to Janelle, her arms outstretched for the writhing baby, and he began to laugh, and every other thought he had in the world was swept out, out into the endless ocean.
2.
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