This issue was fixed in Patch 1.17.7
The 3/22 patch did the exact same thing to my game. No CC. I have everything installed except the romantic garden stuff pack. Tried "repair game" and also deleting/repurchasing the lab to no avail. Had my sim quit her job, rejoin it, cheated to get her back where she was previously and now she can synthesize serums again. You basically enable testing cheats and then enter "careers.promote scientist" until they're where you want them to be in their career. It did seem to work to fix the issue.
How do you enable testing cheats?
