SOUNDS GREAT!
Breakthrough therapy reverses hearing loss
LISTEN UP! A breakthrough new regenerative therapy may reverse the most common form of hearing loss, which impacts more than 40 million Americans! In clinical studies, the biotech company Frequency Therapeutics found significant improvement in hearing, the ability to understand speech and recognize words in people with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL).
Some patients were able to hear their children’s words for the first time in 30 years! The company’s experimental therapy is designed to treat the underlying cause of SNHL by regenerating sensory hair cells in the inner ear, which enable us to hear.
Humans are born with about 15,000 cochlear hair cells in each ear canal. But they gradually die off due to aging, chronic loud sounds, viral infections or exposure to some drugs, including chemotherapies and antibiotics.
Researchers injected the regenerating drug, dubbed FX-322, into patients’ inner ears to stimulate existing cells that create the vital hairs.
Some participants saw significant improvement after just one shot — with benefits lasting almost two years!
Hearing loss can lead to isolation and loneliness and has been linked to the development of dementia. “The potential to restore hearing will have enormous impact on society,” says Jeff Karp, a professor at Harvard Medical School and member of the company’s medical advisory board. Frequency Therapeutics says their approach offers advantages over existing treatments including hearing aids, which are limited in improving sound clarity, and gene therapies, which rely on reprogramming a patient’s extracted cells in a lab and delivering them to precise areas.
“Obviously more needs to be done, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in ten or 15 years, we can get to the point where reversing hearing loss would be similar to Lasik surgery, where you’re in and out in an hour or two, and you can completely restore your vision,” says Karp. “I think we’ll see the same thing for hearing loss.”
The company is recruiting for a new 124-person trial and expects to have preliminary results early next year.