Forty Signs of Rain Read Online Free PDF Page B

into the world from nowhere, if the numbers were good.
    And they were. They were very good. They would have to plot it to be sure, but they had been doing this series of experiments for so long that they knew what the raw data would look like. The data were good. So now they
were
like Wile E. Coyote, standing in midair staring amazed at the viewers, because a bridge from the cliff had magically extended out and saved them. Saved them from the long plunge of a retraction in the press and subsequent NASDAQ free fall.
    Except that Wile E. Coyote was invariably premature in his sense of relief. The Road Runner always had another devastating move to make. Leo’s hand was shaking.
    “Shit,” he said. “I would be totally celebrating right now if it weren’t for Derek. Look at this”—pointing—“it’s even better than before.”
    “See, Derek knew it would turn out like this.”
    “The fuck he did.”
    “Pretty good numbers,” Brian said with a grin. “Paper’s almost written too. It’s just plug these in and do a conclusion.”
    Marta said, “Conclusions will be simple, if we tell the truth.”
    Leo nodded. “Only problem is, the truth would have to admit that even though this part works, we still don’t have a therapy, because we haven’t got targeted delivery. We can make it but we can’t get it into living bodies where it needs to be.”
    “You didn’t read the whole website,” Marta told him, smiling angrily again.
    “What do you mean?” Leo was in no mood for teasing. His stomach had already shrunk to the size of a walnut.
    Marta laughed, which was her way of showing sympathy without admitting to any. “He’s going to buy Urtech.”
    “What’s Urtech?”
    “They have a targeted delivery method that works.”
    “What do you mean, what would that be?”
    “It’s new. They just got awarded the patent on it.”
    “Oh no.”
    “Oh yes.”
    “Oh my God. It hasn’t been validated?”
    “Except by the patent, and Derek’s offer to buy it, no.”
    “Oh my
God
. Why does he
do
this kind of stuff?”
    “Because he intends to be the CEO of the biggest pharmaceutical of all time. Like he told
People
magazine.”
    “Yeah right.”
    Torrey Pines Generique, like most biotech start-ups, was undercapitalized, and could only afford a few rolls of the dice. One of them had to look promising enough to attract the capital that would allow it to grow further. That was what they had been trying to accomplish for the five years of the company’s existence, and the effort was just beginning to show results with these experiments. What they needed now was to beable to insert their successfully tailored gene into the patient’s own cells, so that afterward it would be the patient’s own body producing increased amounts of the needed proteins. If that worked, there would be no immune response from the body’s immune system, and with the protein being produced in therapeutic amounts, the patient would be not just helped, but cured.
    Amazing.
    But (and it was getting to be a big but) the problem of getting the altered DNA into living patients’ cells hadn’t been solved. Leo and his people were not physiologists, and they hadn’t been able to do it. No one had. Immune systems existed precisely to keep these sorts of intrusions from happening. Indeed, one method of inserting the altered DNA into the body was to put it into a virus and give the patient a viral infection, benign in its ultimate effects because the altered DNA reached its target. But since the body fought viral infections, it was not a good solution. You didn’t want to compromise further the immune systems of people who were already sick.
    So, for a long time now they had been in the same boat as everyone else, chasing the Holy Grail of gene therapy, a “targeted nonviral delivery system.” Any company that came up with such a system, and patented it, would immediately have the method licensed for scores of procedures, and very likely one