Regenerating tissue into hearing cells will cure deafness in elderly
British scientists have taken a significant step toward regenerating ear cells that are critical to hearing in old age and could prevent the dizziness that accounts for 80 per cent of falls in the elderly.
Scientists at University College London (UCL) have for the first time turned ordinary tissue from the human ear into cells with hairlike fea- tures.
By regenerating cells in the ear’s “vestibular” system — which is responsible for balance — they could prevent falls and dizziness.
Human inner ear hair cells, which are also responsible for hearing, cannot regenerate, so leave people permanently deaf and unbalanced.
“We have shown that the human vestibular tissue has the capacity to generate cells with characteristics similar to hair cells,” said Ruth Taylor of UCL’s Ear Institute. “Deafness affects 50 per cent of people over the age of 60 and if our research could be extended to the cochlea it would have a major impact on the population.”
The inner ear is responsible for balance through the vestibular system, and hearing through the cochlea. Hair cells detect movement or sound, and their loss is a cause of disorders such as deafness, dizziness and imbalance.
Taylor’s team replicated in humans experiments previously done in mice, in which a gene, called Atoh1, switched on a signalling pathway through which ordinary ear tissue was regenerated as hair cells. She believed the challenge of increasing the number of cells was “not insurmountable” but it would take time and resources to generate fully functioning hair cells.