Two days after the incident quieted down, Charlotte finally returned to the institute. With Gentry back in Riverspire City, Judd was completely swamped, practically buried under a mountain of research data. Even his own department colleagues rarely saw him.
Knowing she'd been away for too long, the first thing Charlotte did upon returning to her post was to get an update on the core project's progress.
After two hours of catching up, Charlotte walked toward Judd's office, only to find him at the door, frowning at the AD drug pipeline data displayed on the projection screen.
She knocked.
Judd looked up and gestured for her to come in.
Charlotte's gaze fell on the screen. "Is there a problem?"
"The big data doesn't support moving the new drug to the next phase of clinical trials," Judd's voice carried a hint of exhaustion. His long fingers tapped lightly on the desk as his eyes returned to the dense block of figures. "While our initial experimental data was promising, we found discrepancies in the activity expression of several key enzymes when simulating human metabolic pathways. This directly impacts the stability of the effective blood concentration. If we push forward, the risk of failure in Phase III clinical trials would be sky-high."
Charlotte frowned in thought, remaining silent for a moment. "If we could coordinate a batch of cerebrospinal fluid samples from AD patients for deep sequencing, could we find a breakthrough at the genetic level?"
He paused, turning to look at her. "Can you do that?"
"I'll give it my all."
As Charlotte was about to leave, he called out to her again. "How are your injuries?"
He had seen the news circulating online over the past few days, but he couldn't find a reasonable excuse to check on her. He worried his concern would seem misplaced.
Charlotte smiled. "I'm fine. See? Good as new. You, on the other hand, have been running yourself ragged since Gentry left. Make sure you get some rest. Don't burn yourself out."
Judd looked down with a faint smile, accepting her concern. "Okay, I will."

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