Inner Ear Hair Cell Regeneration — Maybe We Can Know More

[jeff W]

I don't think it's possible to damage your auditory nerve through noise unless it's a physical impact or something that sends a shockwave. At least there doesn't seem to be any studies really mentioning that, only the haircells.

I can hear up to 16KHz (probably even higher before the accident), but I do know I got hearing damage, especially around 8-10KHz range. Do the pure tone sweep and you will probably notice some damage if you can hear tone 6000KHz, but not the tone 6001KHz.

That's not correct. Age causes changes in the composition of auditory and vestibular nerves over time indeed this would seem to be the case for all the cranial nerves possibly with the exception of olfaction, NASA funded work into this a long time ago, they showed that the nerve health peaks at puberty and then begins to change slowly over time, theoretically these changes interfere with action potential conduction quality/clarity, add onto that some pathogens and HC damage and you have a setup for a hearing loss. Schuknecht also examined this sort of things in cat models over many years, bashing them over the head and inspecting the distinct types of cochear damage that resulted. The real issue is the amount, the amount of noise is just too much for modern human ears. Its an industrial issue, I have read that people who live near airports can have lower scores on basic cognitive tasks than age matched controls who live in the more sedate areas, others refute this data, it is quite frightening. It is put much more eloquently below.

https://www.docdroid.net/cdzeIoR/

 

[IvanRus]

 

[Autumnly]

Wasn't sure where to post this..


Bioinformatic integration of molecular networks and major pathways involved in mice cochlear and vestibular supporting cells
Received: 25 Dec 2017; Accepted: 19 Mar 2018.
Conclusions
We have predicted the main pathways and molecular networks for ENHCs in the Organ of Corti and vestibular neuroepithelium. These pathways will facilitate the design of molecular maps to select novel candidate genes for hearing or vestibular loss to conduct functional studies.

 

[Berik]

https://alliancerm.org
"Alliance for Regenerative Medicine "
Someone from Tinnitustalk attending? Curious if FX amongst others will bring some news.

 

[Flamingo1]

https://alliancerm.org
"Alliance for Regenerative Medicine "
Someone from Tinnitustalk attending? Curious if FX amongst others will bring some news.

Where do you see that the topics include hearing restoration?

 

[Autumnly]

Where do you see that the topics include hearing restoration?

You can view their agenda here. Frequency Therapeutics is mentioned as one of the presenting companies (8:55am - Company Presentations).

 

[spingee]

Btw there was no update from Standford initiative for hearing loss cure for a year.
Hope they are just busy with some breaktrhrough

 

[Champ]

Btw there was no update from Standford initiative for hearing loss cure for a year.
Hope they are just busy with some breaktrhrough

I wouldn't put too much stock on any college making a breakthrough for a cure. The companies working on this stuff are far more likely to come to a working solution since real-world capital is on the line. College researchers if anything will try to drag out their work as long as possible to cover as much material as possible to justify their existence. It will definitely provide valuable data and insights but companies will be the ones solving this problem.

 

[Aaron123]

Interesting paper with a new twist on delivering drugs to the inner ear - particularly to repair synapses and preserve spiral ganglion neurons: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.8b00022

The idea is binding neurotrophins (which have been shown to restore synapses in animal models) to small molecules that bind to bone. Thus they are taking advantage of the fact that the cochlea is encased in bone to increase the amount of time the drug is in the inner ear thus hopefully increasing its effectiveness.

 

[Jim51042]

Interesting paper with a new twist on delivering drugs to the inner ear - particularly to repair synapses and preserve spiral ganglion neurons: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.8b00022

I was only able to see the abstract. Do you know what their plans/timeline are for the development/testing of these molecules?

 

[Aaron123]

I was only able to see the abstract. Do you know what their plans/timeline are for the development/testing of these molecules?

This is basic scientific research done with extracted cochlea (i.e., it was not done in living mice). No plans are given in the paper, but presumably they will test on (living) mice models of synaptic damage and go from there. So likely years.

 

[rsmcfar]

Layman's discussion of the study discussed above I believe.

http://news.usc.edu/140224/new-study-shows-hope-for-hearing-loss/

 

[Jim51042]

Layman's discussion of the study discussed above I believe.

The article referred to it as a

breakthrough solution

Would the fact that this basic research is being done universities delay a possible drug to market?

 

[RB2014]

The article referred to it as a
Would the fact that this basic research is being done universities delay a possible drug to market?

All we need is one of the hearing loss companies like Decibel or Frequency to take this information and run with it. The research the universities do shouldn't delay the drug to market. I'm pretty sure they share all of the information they gather with everyone so any of the companies is free to pursue this method further.

 

[Margus]

They write in the article "Inside this part of the ear, there's fluid constantly flowing that would sweep dissolved drugs away...". I wonder how Frequency or Decibel are addressing these issues? I guess phase 1 trial from Frequency was about to find it out, but from the article it seems that we should not really expect to find any traces of drug in inner ear for long time.

 

[grate_biff]

They write in the article "Inside this part of the ear, there's fluid constantly flowing that would sweep dissolved drugs away...". I wonder how Frequency or Decibel are addressing these issues? I guess phase 1 trial from Frequency was about to find it out, but from the article it seems that we should not really expect to find any traces of drug in inner ear for long time.

Thats why they have their compound in gel form, slowly diffusing through the round window.
And yes, phase 1 was about finding out concentration levels, over time. And according to them it was a success!

 

[reggie green]

I guess we drug would need to be apply again after it wash away,

 

[grate_biff]

I guess we drug would need to be apply again after it wash away,

That we will know after phase 2 trial is completed, but for now they have seen pre-clinical results after just one administration. It depends, I would think, of your initial presence of progenitor cells.

 

[jeff W]

Did anyone read anything about cgf166 expanding their trial to other types of hearing loss?

Speak of the devil, this from Lust1g and St@ecker.

 

[Stev]

~10-13dB recovery through direct differentiation of support cells. Not too bad. That's a bit over a 2x improvement in hearing thresholds.

This is a huge deal right??? Is it not? I feel like we should be pretty stoked about this. Has there been anything else like this where hair cells are regenerated in mammals? Am I missing something here???

 

[parsky]

This is a huge deal right??? Is it not? I feel like we should be pretty stoked about this. Has there been anything else like this where hair cells are regenerated in mammals? Am I missing something here???

Definitely good. The rubber meets the road when they do human trials though. Sometimes things don't work on humans that worked in other animal models. Exciting none the less

 

[tomytl]

News from HEI Hough Ear Institute commented by other top notch researchers...
https://www.the-scientist.com/?arti...NA-Injection-Restores-Hearing-in-Guinea-Pigs/

 

[ee9892]

News from HEI Hough Ear Institute commented by other top notch researchers...
https://www.the-scientist.com/?arti...NA-Injection-Restores-Hearing-in-Guinea-Pigs/

Sounds great. The more groups researching this the better

 

[Berik]

https://clinicalgate.com/noise-induced-hearing-loss/#bib33

Using scanning electron microscopy, 1 to 2 months after the inoculation of the Math 1 gene insert, immature hair cells within the nonsensory supporting cells of the organ of Corti were detected. Most importantly, follow-up studies in the deafened guinea pig showed that not only did Math 1 induce regeneration of hair cells in the adult, deafened guinea pig, but also substantially improved hearing thresholds were measured.

Anybody any details about this study? Can only find it behind paywalls. Curious how much "substantially impoved" is.

 

[Berik]

http://hearinghealthmatters.org/hea...hlear-hair-cells-hearing-loss-rna-injections/

Interesting article. Again a different approach?

 

[Apolonia]

http://hearinghealthmatters.org/hea...hlear-hair-cells-hearing-loss-rna-injections/

Interesting article. Again a different approach?

Should we believe this approach? Why hasn't anyone spoken of this?

 

[Autumnly]

From the video, starts at 2:40
Pill - Hidden Hearing Loss & Tinnitus

• a pill that in preclinical models seems to be very effective at treating tinnitus (not mentioned whether acute and/or chronic t)
• seems to regrow the nerve endings in the inner ear
• may be able to restore hearing
• has been through Phase 1
• ready for Phase 2

 

[Apolonia]

From the video, starts at 2:40
Pill - Hidden Hearing Loss & Tinnitus

• a pill that in preclinical models seems to be very effective at treating tinnitus
• seems to regrow the nerve endings in the inner ear
• may be able to restore hearing
• has been through Phase 1
• ready for Phase 2

Is this really a real thing??? Don't wanna be a pessimist, but it looks too good to be true...

 

[ee9892]

From the video, starts at 2:40
Pill - Hidden Hearing Loss & Tinnitus

• a pill that in preclinical models seems to be very effective at treating tinnitus (not mentioned whether acute and/or chronic t)
• seems to regrow the nerve endings in the inner ear
• may be able to restore hearing
• has been through Phase 1
• ready for Phase 2

Ill huff this dudes farts everyday for the rest of my life if they can bring forth that pill.

Thats some great news.

 

[Autumnly]

Is this really a real thing??? Don't wanna be a pessimist, but it looks too good to be true...

There are still many things we don't know about this pill:

• whether it only works for acute or chronic tinnitus
• whether it works only for a subgroup of sufferers or several subgroups
• how big the therapeutic window is
• don't forget: Phase 1 success rate: approximately 70%, Phase 2 success rate: approximately 33%
• other companies working on a drug for hidden hearing loss: Otonomy, Affichem, Bionics Institute and University of Melbourne,...

In this article (RNA Injection Restores Hearing in Guinea Pigs, Hough Ear Institute) it says

• "As damaged hair cells in general cannot repair themselves, he explains, they'll die relatively quickly. At that point, regeneration is the only option to recover hearing. He says that lengthening the time between the damage and the initiation of treatment to a month, which would give damaged hair cells time to die, would help distinguish between repair and regeneration."

Wouldn't that mean that hidden hearing loss would turn into "actual" hearing loss (meaning the death of the hair cell) within a month? But I've read somewhere in this thread that damaged hair cells could potentially survive for years (I think)...