Audion is a dead end. For one, their drug is in the form of a liquid, which given the environment of the inner ear seems like an inferior drug delivery method given the other gel/polymer technology that's out there now. Also, transdifferentiation is most certainly an inferior hair cell regeneration method as compared to Frequency's dividing/differentiation method. If you think about it, transdifferentiation in a way mutates the cellular structure of the inner ear. It's taking supporting cells and repurposing them to be hair cells, which depletes the supporting cell supply, and fundamentally changes the cellular structural construct of the inner ear. Will McLean has eluded to several times that supporting cells play a pivotal role in the function of inner ear biology, even if they're just lying dormant.
It is very poorly understood at this point what happens if you exhaust the pool of supporting cell supply in favor of hair cell supply.