Homo Sapiens

Following a request from headquarters, Tian Hemeng proposed a procurement plan worth one billion.

The plan allocated 500 million for imported drugs and 500 million for purchasing production lines. Furthermore, Tian Hemeng promised that Zhengda Company would be their priority supplier for any future external drug procurement.

Xie Bin’s eyes practically lit up as he looked at the list of imported drugs in his hand.

It detailed the required import quantities for a total of 44 drugs, including Entecavir Dispersible Tablets, Magnesium Isoglycyrrhizinate Injection, Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate Enteric Coated Capsules, Malic Acid Entecavir Tablets, Irbesartan Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets, Rosuvastatin Calcium Tablets, Prostaglandin E1 Injection, and more.

Some of these drugs were needed by Qingye Pharmacy, while others were for Qingye Hospital.

However, Xie Bin had no authority to make a decision regarding the production lines, though he estimated headquarters wouldn’t refuse. After all, if Zhengda Company didn’t sell, other companies would.

Qingye Medical requested a significant number of production lines, mainly focused on cardiovascular, anti-tumor, orthopedic, analgesic, and supplementary drugs.

Drugs for liver diseases and the respiratory and digestive systems were not on the list. This was mainly because Qingye Medical planned to develop these drugs in-house and wouldn’t need production lines from Zhengda.

In total, they selected production lines for 13 types of drugs.

After Xie Bin communicated with his headquarters, the two parties quickly reached an agreement. Zhengda Pharmaceutical would sell a bundle of soon-to-be or already decommissioned drug production lines to Qingye Medical.

After the contract was signed, Zhengda Company’s reserve funds at Qingye Bank rose to over 500 million.

However, Zhengda Company had no intention of withdrawing the funds. They knew the money would inevitably be spent. As word of Ai Qingling’s effectiveness spread, many regions had yet to approve it for sale. This meant that for a time, Hongsawaddy, Siam, and Luzon would become the main channels for AIDS patients worldwide to obtain the drug.

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If the miracle cure for AIDS—Ai Qingling—had merely sparked some interest around the globe, then Rabies Killer became an absolute necessity in many less-developed regions.

After all, these less-developed regions lacked the resources for widespread rabies vaccination, both for humans and pets, resulting in insufficient coverage.

In Siam, for instance, there was a major rabies outbreak as recently as 2018.

Many people who were scratched or bitten by cats and dogs either lacked sufficient awareness or found the vaccine too expensive. They wouldn’t get vaccinated in time, and by the time symptoms appeared, it was essentially a death sentence.

Although Rabies Killer was extremely expensive, its unique ability to be effective even after the onset of symptoms caused its importance to skyrocket.

Of course, Tian Hemeng knew that at the current price point, few partners would ultimately be willing to purchase Rabies Killer.

Consequently, the production output for Rabies Killer was very low. Even at full capacity, the production line could only make 20,000 boxes a month. As it was, the line only ran for an average of three hours a day, yielding a monthly output of just 2,000 boxes.

With low production and low demand, the sales price was naturally high.

Qingye Medical consolidated the production of such niche drugs in a small town near Dongzhi, using a system of rotational batch production.

Typically, one drug would be produced for a week, after which the staff would move to the next workshop to produce a different drug, and so on in a repeating cycle.

They were forced to adopt this production model out of necessity.

After all, this was the fate of niche drugs. The market was only so large, and it was incredibly difficult to keep a single production line running at full capacity.

Otherwise, Qingye Medical wouldn’t be limiting sales of Ai Qingling; they worried about saturating the market too quickly, which would render the production line obsolete.

This was also why many major pharmaceutical companies were reluctant to develop curative drugs.

It was all for the sake of profit.

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And also for the sake of profit, hundreds of generic drug companies in Tianzhu had recently sprung into action.

A large generic drug company in Mumbai had already procured some Ai Qingling through contacts from Tianzhu living in Yangon.

In the laboratory, the owner, Ali, rubbed his hands together eagerly. ”Dr. Kaisa, how is the research coming along?”

Dr. Kaisa, dressed in a white lab coat, shook his head. ”Mr. Chairman, I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid we can’t replicate this drug.”

”Why not?” Ali asked, unwilling to accept it. ”Is our equipment not good enough?”

”Mr. Chairman, it’s not an equipment issue. The problem is we don’t have the raw materials.” Dr. Kaisa threw up his hands.

Ali’s brow furrowed. ”Raw materials?”

”Yes, the raw materials. This new drug requires a specific bacterium, similar to the bacterial strains used for things like penicillin and streptomycin.”

”Then let’s just buy the strain!” Ali exclaimed.

Dr. Kaisa’s mouth twitched. ”Well, the problem is that Qingye Medical hasn’t disclosed what kind of bacteria they use. Based on my experience, it’s definitely not a common medicinal strain.”

”Damn it!” Ali cursed. ”Those greedy bloodsuckers, hiding such crucial information.”

’Heh,’ Dr. Kaisa thought to himself with a silent snort. ’You want to copy someone else’s new drug, and you’re blaming them for not publishing the technical details? Could you be any more shameless?’

Ali suddenly had a flash of inspiration. ”I heard we can synthesize antibiotics now. Could we try producing it that way?”

”Er... Mr. Chairman, the active ingredients in their drug are large-molecule organic compounds,” Dr. Kaisa explained helplessly. ”To synthesize them, we would first have to figure out which part of the molecular structure is the active component. Moreover, that kind of research requires a massive amount of funding and a very long time...”

The moment he heard ”massive amount of funding” and ”a very long time,” Ali’s face fell with disappointment.

A generic drug company like his survived by copying new drugs developed by others. Expecting them to invest heavily in researching a drug with an uncertain future was simply out of the question.

In reality, it wasn’t just the generic drug companies in Tianzhu that were secretly trying to replicate the drug.

Major pharmaceutical companies in Europe and America were also looking into it.

But they all ran into the same roadblock.

Namely, what bacterium had Qingye Medical used to isolate these three new antibiotics? The pharmaceutical companies in Europe and America couldn’t find any similar macromolecules. Their only option was to study the structure of these molecules, hoping to identify an effective antiviral component that they could then adapt and improve upon.

So, what bacterium did Qingye Medical actually use?

The answer was genetically recombined bacteriophages. Li Qingye had modified these bacteriophages beyond recognition. He then pitted them against the AIDS virus in a constant battle, selecting the ones that could resist and kill it.

In other words, the strain used to produce the new antibiotic was not a naturally occurring bacterium. Other labs had no way of obtaining this genetically recombined organism, which meant they couldn’t replicate it anytime soon.

This was just like when penicillin first appeared; the high-yield strains were core secrets for pharmaceutical companies and even entire nations.

Without a high-yield strain, the production cost of regular penicillin was comparable to that of Gold.

The strain Qingye Medical was using didn’t even exist in nature. Other labs couldn’t even isolate a small sample. Faced with this situation, how could they possibly replicate it?

This wasn’t an ordinary inorganic chemical drug, but an organic macromolecule. Synthesizing it artificially would be incredibly difficult.

This was one of the advantages of targeted antibiotics. Without sufficiently advanced genetic technology, one couldn’t even dream of replicating them in the short term.