Chapter 294 Pufferfish
The rapid development of domestic chips has not attracted much attention, mainly because companies such as Yangtze Memory Technologies have chosen to keep a low profile.

After all, at this stage, it is better not to provoke America as much as possible to reduce the possibility of the other party becoming desperate.

Therefore, domestic companies that know about the glue injection machines and injection processes have all implemented very strict confidentiality measures under the official severe warnings.

Although this kind of news will leak out sooner or later, it is actually a good thing for Seris that it can be leaked later. After all, time is on Seris’s side.

Jiang Miao naturally knew about this, but he didn’t care too much. After all, the semiconductor industry was not the core business of Hailufeng Company. After he and Shuya came back, in addition to accompanying their daughter and family, they devoted most of their energy to scientific research.

Shuya has completed the previously shelved artificial cultivation technology of black truffles and three types of boletus, and is currently researching and developing artificial cultivation technology of Acanthopanax albuminus.

Jiang Miao is also engaged in breeding work.

As the scale of Hailufeng Company’s headquarters continues to expand, a new office building is being built on the 100 acres of reserved land next to the headquarters.

Nanhu Village has been completely taken over by Hailufeng Company.

Since the headquarters has a large number of scientific research projects, there are currently 837 relevant scientific research personnel at the headquarters alone, and there are a total of 29 laboratories.

The scientific research base in Nanhu Village is obviously not enough. After all, many agricultural scientific research projects require large areas of site.

Therefore, starting last year, Hailufeng Company has selected 20 semi-enclosed villages across the city that are relatively convenient and confidential as sites for building laboratories.

Seven laboratories have already moved out.

At this time, Jiang Miao was leading his team to a small village in Ketang Town in a low-key manner. A large laboratory was built here, covering an area of ​​nearly 740 acres.

At the entrance of Laboratory 109, Dr. Li Haidong, the laboratory director, and Huang Shaobin, the laboratory’s logistics director, saw Jiang Miao’s convoy arrive and hurried over.

“Boss, welcome to our team for guidance.” Li Haidong is an elegant middle-aged man.

“boss!”

Jiang Miao recognized them at a glance, and then said with a smile: “Haidong, Shaobin, let’s chat inside.”

Huang Shaobin felt proud when he heard the boss calling his name. He extended his right hand and said, “Boss, this way please.”

“Ah.”

Entered into Laboratory 109.

This laboratory is located halfway up a mountain on the side of the local reservoir, and the entire mountain is the laboratory.

Coming in from the entrance at the foot of the mountain, one can see many researchers and internal employees busy at work. Huang Shaobin knew Jiang Miao’s character, so he did not mobilize all the employees to come out to greet him.

“What stage is your project at?”

“We are currently conducting animal experiments.”

“Oh? How’s the experiment going?”

“The variant TTX can effectively anesthetize mice and pigs, and its toxic side effects are much smaller than those of traditional TTX, only about 2% of traditional TTX.”

“How is the anesthesia?”

Li Haidong was excited when talking about his research: “It’s very good, it works quickly, and the anesthesia lasts for a long time, up to about 16 hours. Because the toxic side effects are relatively small, it can be used not only for local anesthesia, but also for general anesthesia.”

“It looks like you found something good!”

“I didn’t expect to achieve such a result.” Li Haidong opened the outer security door of the indoor breeding farm: “Boss, please come in.”

After passing through several strict security gates, they arrived at an indoor farm halfway up the mountain.

A researcher was using a net to scoop up a few puffer fish from the pond.

Looking at the pufferfish that turned into a balloon shape after the stress reaction, Jiang Miao did not touch it casually. After all, these pufferfish are poisonous.

Li Haidong, wearing protective gloves, picked up a pufferfish and said, “Boss, this is the anesthetized pufferfish No. 12 that we bred.”

“Good.” Jiang Miao saw the detailed information of the pufferfish through the identification panel.

This pufferfish is not a species that was modified through genetic modification technology, but a new species that was produced through special feeding and the regulation of symbiotic bacteria.

Laboratory 109 is not a laboratory that studies anesthesia and toxins, but a laboratory that studies non-toxic pufferfish.

Although the country has already realized the technology of breeding non-toxic pufferfish, Hailufeng Company has not given up on this project. Instead, it is studying the deep-level mechanism to achieve completely non-toxic pufferfish breeding.

The anesthetized pufferfish is an unintentional by-product of this process.

Originally, researchers including Li Haidong wanted to use special nutrients and symbiotic bacteria to interfere with the synthesis and accumulation of toxins in pufferfish.

However, they did not expect that in an unintentional experiment, they used a drug to interfere with part of the pufferfish’s toxin synthesis genes, causing its toxin synthesis to deviate and creating a variant of pufferfish toxin.

At first they did not take it too seriously, until as the research progressed, they found that this variant toxin was much less lethal than traditional pufferfish toxin but its anesthetic properties were almost the same. Li Haidong and others realized this, but they were not researching anesthetics, so they applied to the scientific research division and transferred 5 anesthetic-related researchers.

After more than three months of research, they have basically figured out the effects and toxic side effects of the variant TTX.

Although traditional pufferfish toxin can be used as an anesthetic, its side effects are also very terrible.

Tetrodotoxin is a potent sodium channel blocker that can specifically block sodium channels on nerve cell membranes, inhibit the influx of sodium ions, and thus prevent the generation and conduction of nerve impulses, thus exerting an anesthetic effect.

Compared with traditional anesthetics, tetrodotoxin has the advantages of strong analgesic effect and long duration of action.

However, because tetrodotoxin is extremely toxic and can cause death in humans even in very small doses, its extraction, purification, and use require highly professional techniques and strict safety measures, so it has not yet been widely used in clinical anesthesia.

However, in some specific research and experimental fields at home and abroad, tetrodotoxin has certain application value as a special anesthetic or research tool. Now that the 109 laboratory can obtain this result, it actually has a certain element of luck.

Of course, this is also related to Hailufeng’s investment in scientific research. You should know that Hailufeng currently has five scientific research clusters, plus some cooperative projects, with nearly 124 laboratories.

Last year, as much as 244 billion yuan was invested in scientific research, and this year’s scientific research investment is estimated to reach about 500 billion yuan.

With such a huge investment, coupled with the Nuwa system within Hailufeng Company, the probability of achieving results even by luck will not be too low.

After all, as the scale has increased, it is very normal for there to be a few achievements among hundreds of laboratories.

“Are there any problems in the extraction of this pufferfish anesthetic at present?”

“Yes, but it’s not a big problem.”

“Oh? How do you solve it?”

Li Haidong picked up the pufferfish in his hand and said, “Generally speaking, the toxin content in the ovaries and livers of pufferfish is relatively high. The toxin content in the ovaries of some species can be as high as several milligrams or even tens of milligrams per gram. The pufferfish in my hand is the extremely toxic redfin pufferfish, and the toxin content in its ovaries can be as high as about 10 milligrams per gram.”

“The ovaries of an adult redfin pufferfish weigh about 100 to 400 grams, and can produce about 1000 to 4000 milligrams of mutant pufferfish toxin.”

Jiang Miao pinched his chin and said, “You said in your report that 0.5 to 1 mg of mutant pufferfish toxin can cause a domestic pig of the same weight as a human to fall into general anesthesia? In other words, the toxin of a pufferfish can almost anesthetize thousands of people?”

“Yes.”

Another researcher added: “However, there is loss during the extraction process, and about a quarter of the tetrodotoxin cannot be extracted.”

Jiang Miao was not dissatisfied with this situation: “It doesn’t matter. You can continue to breed more common varieties with higher toxin content, and with special feeding, the toxins in the pufferfish will accumulate faster, which can solve this problem.”

Li Haidong also expressed his own thoughts: “Today we invited the boss to come and give us guidance because we want to expand the scale of animal experiments and consider conducting human experiments in the future.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of this matter.”

Seeing Jiang Miao agreed, the smiles on everyone’s faces became more obvious.

At the same time, they secretly sighed that it was nice to take shelter under a big tree. Without Jiang Miao’s background and financial support, even if they could produce research results, whether they could benefit from it in the end would depend on luck.

After all, this kind of anesthetic research project requires various approvals, which is a very troublesome matter, and the small team simply cannot afford the various experimental costs in the later stage, so it is likely that they can only sell the results to large pharmaceutical companies.

Although the variant tetrodotoxin is a sodium channel anesthetic rather than a terrifyingly addictive opioid anesthetic, its approval and various inspections are still very troublesome.

Jiang Miao and Hailufeng Company can solve many problems. Li Haidong and others only need to concentrate on research. They don’t need to be involved in other matters, and they will not lose any benefits.

If this anesthetic is really approved, Li Haidong’s team can get at least 5% of the profits every year as patent incentives.

As for whether this pufferfish anesthetic can be marketed, according to Jiang Miao’s identification panel, the anesthetic has relatively small side effects, with the lowest lethal dose being around 25 mg, while the safe anesthetic dose is 0.5 to 1 mg, a large gap between the two.

Of course, this is only one aspect of the toxic side effects. Sodium channel anesthetics themselves have the characteristic of causing lethal anesthesia. Once used in excess, even if the patient is not poisoned to death, he will first be anesthetized and cause respiratory arrest, thus resulting in a dangerous situation.

This is why anesthetics are controlled drugs.

Without a professional anesthesiologist, this kind of thing cannot be used casually.

Fentanyl is rampant in America, causing more than 70,000 deaths each year from fentanyl use, all because these people use it illegally.

Even though pufferfish anesthetic is not addictive, it cannot be used casually.

However, pufferfish toxin has one advantage, which is that the anesthesia time is relatively long, often up to more than ten hours, and this thing can be made into capsules for oral administration. After all, pufferfish toxin will not lose its effect after high-temperature cooking.

For some elderly patients who need hospice care, perhaps pufferfish anesthetic can reduce some of the application troubles.

After all, if fentanyl and its derivatives are used as anesthetics, due to their extremely addictive nature, once they are sold to patients who need end-of-life care or need to deal with withdrawal reactions, they can easily be exploited by criminals.

The pufferfish anesthetic perfectly solves this problem.

You have to know that as a sodium channel anesthetic, this thing is not only toxic, but also has an anesthetic effect and no obvious addictiveness.

After all, the reason why opioid anesthetics are addictive is due to their mechanism of action. This type of anesthetic essentially replaces the endogenous opioid components of the central nervous system, causing people to feel a sense of euphoria after using it.

Once opioids are used in large doses for a long time, the pleasure threshold will be exceeded, making it difficult for people to obtain pleasure in daily life.

In other words, after using this thing, the endogenous dopamine motivation you get when doing other things will not make you happy at all, and you will enter a vicious circle.

Anesthesiologists in domestic hospitals will use as small doses as possible when using anesthetics in order to avoid addiction in patients. This also leads to a problem, that is, many anesthesiologists use relatively conservative doses, which may lead to ineffective anesthesia or incomplete anesthesia.

Pufferfish anesthetic can solve this problem. After all, it is not addictive. The upper limit of its safe dose is more than ten milligrams away from the dose used for general anesthesia, which can ensure anesthesia to the maximum extent.

For major surgeries that take more than a few hours, pufferfish anesthesia can maximize safety and efficiency.

When it comes to dealing with withdrawal reactions, tetrodotoxin is also a very good drug.

You know, humans are in pain all the time.

That’s right, humans are in pain all the time, and the reason we don’t feel pain is because our brains are constantly secreting opioids to relieve this innate pain.

The brains of opioid addicts can no longer produce endogenous opioid components on their own. Therefore, once they do not use drugs, their entire body will feel like it is being bitten by ants. This is another important reason why many opioid addicts cannot extricate themselves.

Low-dose tetrodotoxin capsules can be used for pain relief without too many side effects. As long as rehabilitation training and social isolation are carried out, some cryptozoologists can get rid of drug dependence.

After seeing the results, Jiang Miao asked Li Haidong and others to write a detailed report and hand it to him, and he would find someone to solve various approval problems.

Then he went to Hailufeng Hospital in the city to take a look at several medical-related clinical trial projects.

(End of this chapter)