Tinnitus Talk Support Forum

Are you funded professor? How's the research is going? I hope you can find smth!

Paulmanlike, I have stated my (fairly unpopular) opinion on the potential near-term value of hair cell regeneration therapies for tinnitus clear in the Hair Cell Regeneration Can We Know More thread. I think we are of the same opinion on this.

Thanks, vermillion. Yes, we have funding from the NIH as well as private philanthropy.

Good to have you around. Do you also have tinnitus?

Ah, so you are of the same opinion as me that an inner hair cell regen is unlikely to reduce the actual volume or alleviate the tinnitus? I couldn't find your post that states this. Do you have any predictions about oto-311 and am-102 being targeted for chronic? I think they will be both for acute again, and that a treatment for chronic is unlikely.

Vermillion, unfortunately, yes. I have a high-frequency tonal tinnitus. It reminds me everyday about the urgency of finding the mechanism and identifying new therapies. These are the top priorities for our research.

Where are you based and do you have any links with progress with your work?

I'm sorry to hear that. Well when you need guinea pigs just let me know! Do you have a website? All the best professor.

Paulmanlike, check out Pg. 90 of that thread. In a nutshell, tinnitus is a complex, distributed neurological disorder arising from a brain plasticity process that has run amok. I have little confidence that any pill, in and of itself, is going to turn it off like a light switch. However, I am intrigued (and even optimistic) that pharmacological therapies could be part of the solution.

I just don't believe in "magic bullet" theapries for solving complex disorders.

As for inner ear therapies - most (but not all) people with tinnitus have widespread, chronic cellular degeneration in the inner ear. There is no precedent in any field of modern medicine for regenerating any organ system with widespread chronic failure.

The inner ear is among the most complex, intricate and inaccessible organ in our body that is under-studied and under-funded.

Logically, it seems improbable to me that this will be the organ system where we see a quantum leap forward in regenerative therapies. I'm not saying it is impossible, but it is improbable.

so you have little confidence about the potential success of hearing regeneration as well as tinnitus suppression?

I thought they were on the way to successfully regenerate hair cells and repair synapses

Little confidence for adult ears that have long-standing, widespread damage. No, no laboratory or company that I know of is close to regenerating all of the cellular components in an ear like this. Not in mammals at least.

Protecting an ear from imminent damage - yes. Repairing an ear that was very recently damaged - maybe. Restoring function to an ear with a genetic syndrome (Usher, some Connexin mutations) - maybe. These are the targets of most companies.

Regardless, the ear is just the trigger. The pathology that gives rise to tinnitus is in the brain.

To your last point, I do think some of the potassium channel modulators are interesting and there are some compounds in that area that we have been testing. There are other labs working hard on this and I think the next generation of K+ modulators could be an important part of a combined tinnitus therapy.

Godspeed!

Apart from the k+ modulators, Josef F talks about both DBS and serotonin and dopamine as pharmaceutical treatments for tinnitus? However he did not elaborate how and why he thinks these could treat tinnitus, do you know?