You Gotta Believe How Much Money Being Involved Here

Like @attheedgeofscience i like numbers. Would just like to point out how much money involved here. This is basically the reason for way the big pharmas can´t stay out of putting a lot of money in hearing disorders. This is possibly one of the few unexplored areas were you could earn an endless amount of money if you succeed. Also if I was top management in one of those haring aid manufacture i would prepare for a possible new gamechanger... put it this way, how much turnover do you think manufacturers of glases lost once you could laser your eyes instead. Or how much money the global telecom operators lost once Skype entered the market.

Let me give you some numbers, and this is really crazy numbers.....
2015 there will be some 11,8 million hearing aids sold world wide. The value when sold from the manufactures is about to US$ 6,8 billion (US$ 6 800 000 000): This means that the average price from manufacture is just under $600 each. When they are sold to us the cost is $1000-1500 with taxes, fitting etc.

Let´s assume that somebody succeed in a gene therapy for the inner ear giving a lot of hearing back. The result would be equal or better than a hearing aid. A reasonable price for this treatment would be around $10 000 per ear. I would pay it every day in a week and twice on a Sunday. Most will have insurance covering it anyway. Hundred-thousands of people are paying $3000-4000 to get their eyes fixed by laser.

Now let´s take this one step further. Assume that 3-5% would chose this rout instead of hearing-aids per year. Lets say 500 000 treatments per year times $10 000. That would be an total income of US$5 billion (US$5 000 000 000). It´s not uncommon that companies like this got an valuation around 20 times turnover. The market cap for a company like this could exceed US$100 billions.

This is for sure not an easy task but all of this promising animal studies must keep us hopeful. With all the things going on with gene therapy and stem cells its quite clear to me that this is going happen. The question is, where, and when? How will be the first to enter this multi billion market?

To me it seamed quite easy for company's like Otonomy and Auris to raise foundlings close to $100 millions. As you can see there might be a quite big stake out there....let´s hope somebody is getting really really rich soon!