Stem cell treatment for hearing loss12/13/2022 ![]() We have overcome a major hurdle."Ībout 8.5 percent of adults aged 55 to 64 in the U.S. "It will provide a previously unavailable tool to make an inner or outer hair cell. "Our finding gives us the us the first clear cell switch to make one type versus the other," said lead study author Jaime Garcia-Anoveros, professor of anesthesia, neurology and neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The study will be published in Nature May 4. 'Frequency's development of a disease-modifying therapeutic that can be administered with a simple injection could have a profound effect on chronic noise-induced hearing loss,' said Dr Chris Loose, the company's co-founder.But Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a single master gene that programs ear hair cells into either outer or inner ones, overcoming a major hurdle that had prevented the development of these cells to restore hearing. The drug cocktails from this study could be injected into the middle ear, diffuse across a membrane into the inner ear, and start the process of hair-cell regeneration.ĭr Karp and colleagues have established a start-up, Frequency Therapeutics, with the aim of developing a treatment for hearing loss, and they hope to begin human clinical trials within 18 months. However, this technique produced only 200 cells, which was not sufficient to fully reverse deafness.ĭr Karp said that the research findings 'show promise for a therapy to treat patients with hearing loss', which affects more than 11 million people in the UK. ![]() The work was founded on a previous study published in Neuron, in which hair cells were produced from mouse stem cells. 'The natural signalling cascade that exists in the body will drive a portion of those cells to become hair cells,' he explained. In a second experiment, Dr Karp and colleagues multiplied these stem cells before injecting them directly into a mouse inner ear. The team showed that the technique worked with cells from mice, primates and humans. They first extracted cells from a mouse's cochlear with features that marked them out as a type of stem cell. Then they used a unique drug cocktail, which encouraged the cells to multiply, before maturing them into large populations of hair cells using a second drug cocktail. In the study, published in Cell Reports, the researchers report that they managed to generate more than 11,000 inner hair cells – more than 60 times the number generated in previous attempts. Intrigued, we decided to explore whether these hair cells could be regenerated,' said Dr Jeff Karp, a biomedical engineer at Brigham and Women's Hospital. 'Amazingly, birds and amphibians are capable of regenerating hair cells throughout their life, suggesting that the biology exists and should be possible for humans. Humans are born with only 15,000 inner hair cells, but when they are damaged they cannot regenerate. They hope to use the newly grown cells to replace those that gradually die over time as a result of ageing, loud noises and toxic drugs, which can lead to acquired deafness. Scientists have developed a way of growing thousands of human hair cells – sensors in the inner ear that detect sound – from stem cells. ![]()
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