Hearing restored in deaf animals
Published: February 16, 2005
Human treatment several years away.
Researchers from Michigan for the first time have restored hearing in deaf mammals by using gene therapy to regenerate hair cells in the inner ear.
Although it is not yet clear how well the guinea pigs hear, the results suggest the breakthrough is a major step towards treating humans with hearing loss.
The team from the University of Michigan Medical School used a gene called Atoh1 to grow new functioning hair cells.
For years, scientists have been searching for a way to regenerate functioning hair cells.
“We inserted a gene called Atoh1, a key regulator of auditory hair cell development, into non-sensory epithelial cells that remain in the deafened inner ears of adult guinea pigs, whose original hair cells were destroyed by exposure to ototoxic drugs,” Said research director Dr. Yehoash Raphael .
“Eight weeks after treatment, we found new auditory hair cells in the Atoh1 treated ears of the research animals. Auditory tests indicated that the generation of new hair cells coincided with restoration of hearing thresholds.”
Restoring auditory threshold levels is an important advance, but Raphael cautions that it shouldn’t be considered the same as restoring normal hearing. “At this early stage the structural and functional repairs are incomplete and the hearing of these animals is likely to be distorted,” he says. “For this and other reasons, it will be several years before Atoh1 gene therapy is ready for human testing.”
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