Bae Sun-Mi requested twenty-four retinal degeneration mouse models from the Experiment Animal Resource Center. And on the second day, someone from the Research Support Department showed up with a cart that had six cages on it.1

Each individual patient’s cells had to be used when making induced pluripotent stem cells, and this was the same for mice as well. Young-Joon harvested fibroblast cells from twenty out of the twenty-four mice and dedifferentiated them into stem cells by inserting the four genes into them.1

But this was not all; Young-Joon still had to differentiate those cells into optic nerve cells. He used the lentivirus to introduce a few new kinds of genes and grew them carefully for ten days by controlling the expression level.1

On Monday morning, Young-Joon opened the incubator and took out the nutrient broth. The broth contained hydrocortisone at a five micromolar concentration. It was also treated with EGF and dorsomorphin. He did it all according to what Rosaline directed him to do. The results were also exactly what Rosaline predicted: the stem cells differentiated into optic nerve cells. It worked.0

‘I made optic nerve cells.’0

Young-Joon felt chills down his body. He couldn’t believe that he really made artificial optic nerve cells in just ten days. Now, he had to inject this in the eyes of the retinal degeneration mice with a syringe.2

“Lead Bae, could you help me?” Young-Joon asked.2

He went into the animal experiment lab with Bae Sun-Mi, gave each of the mice...0