Frequency Therapeutics — Hearing Loss Regeneration

And Hyperacusis

 

Even if this is successful it won't matter. Nobody will be able to afford it unless you're obscenely rich. A company called Spark therapeutics just recently released a revolutionary treatment for blindness but it costs 425000$... per eye. That's comically absurd. Same thing for this. Unless someone can inform me otherwise.

 

All novelty medicine's are quite expensive at first. Price will decrease, look at eye laser therapy e.g. The market Spark is focusing on, is a rare disease, so the market is limited. FX is focusing on a much, much bigger market.
Also, there's quite some competitors active; Decibel, Audion, Frequency. This will also lead to a price drop. But indeed, it will take some time. From the other hand, they will also need cash flow for returns to investors and fund new research, so insanely expensive drugs would limit their revenue. They will look for an optimum. Eventually, it becomes affordable. Given the procedure, it shouldn't be too expensive.

 

As @Berik said the price will decrease, but just knowing that there is a chance of escaping T just around the corner will be a temporary cure for our sanity when we will wait to be able to afford it.

If it's gonna work then every country will try to refund it via health insurance sooner or later.

 

Terrible comparison, sorry.

For rare diseases, you need high prices to cover costs and make profits. For common diseases, such a price does not make sense at all as your profit will be lower compared to a price of lets say 10.000 $.

 

Besides the above, in Europe we have actual national health systems that will pay for it

 

Disagree. The rarer the disease, the more expensive the drug. The market for hearing loss is huge. They could sell it for a sky high price, but only sell it to a few people, or they can price it lower and sell to more people. In the end they will find the price they believe maximizes their revenue.

 

If you could sell 3,000 times for 100K, or 3,000,000 times for 10K... Would mean you have 29.7 Billion more in revenue. Then all you have to do is sell that Bitcoin .

 

I wonder how far they are with progenitor cell activation in other disease such as macular degeneration, last time I read about I they were able to regenerate retina cells but they didn't 'integrate'

 

I've been reading through this thread and had a few questions:

1. I have high frequency hearing loss in one ear. It is normal up to 3KHz but then it drops to 50db at 4KHz and 75db at 6Khz and 8Khz. No idea what it is above 8KHz but I'm sure its either severe or profound. As I read through here, I've seen that this treatment may not work for my high frequency hearing loss since its severe/profound? Is that confirmed or just speculation?

2. Apparently, for this treatment to work, you need the supporting cells. How do you know whether you have the supporting cells? Is it as simple as measuring the severity of the hearing loss? Is it possible the hair cells could die but the supporting cells could remain?

3. If this treatment would not work, are there other treatments in development that anyone knows of that would treat my condition?

 

Great questions. Hopefully someone can chime in that knows more than me.
1. A lot of people that this type of loss. I havent seen anything official other than severe/profound can no longer be repaired. I think its speculation up to this point, but they have come out and said this in posts on other sites. I'm not sure if they mean across all frequencies or just the specific frequencies.
2. I think you are correct that once you go severe/profound you no longer have supporting cells. I hope that the hair cells could die and supporting cells remain, but then why would this not work on severe/profound. I'm not sure I have not seen an answer to this.
3. Besides Genvec... and we are still waiting on the official results, I think this is the only thing out there that we know anything about that has any promise. Decibel is doing lots of great research, but they havent come out with anything yet. the generally consensus is the Genvec approach was a bust or at least too early an attempt with the information we had at the time.

There are guys on this site that can probably help provide some answers to these questions and hopefully they can chime in.

 

What about Audion, Otonomy etc? This is far from the only thing in my opinion.

 

What are your guys thoughts on FX approach towards Hyperacusis caused by noise exposure? Love some discussion around this

 

It's really hard to discuss since the mechanism of action behind H (and T) aren't understood yet. There are some theories but no actual answers. But we can always hope.

 

So my theory is, fix the hearing loss/nerve damage, fix the Tinnitus/Hyperacusis. When I think about the brain, I compare it to a computer. If you take a program, and remove part of the code what happens? The program errors right? If you input the same code again, and re run it, the program should work again. So why would our brains any different? The brain is looking for a specific input, and its no available. This results in an error/ feedback. Fix the gaps, fix the problem

 

I am rather skeptical tbh.

 

What is severe/profound? I have 50 dB loss at 15-16 KHz in my left ear. Is that severe? I would love to improve my hearing in that range to eliminate tinnitus (hopefully till I'm 80 or dead, I'm in my early 30s).

 

https://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Degree-of-Hearing-Loss/

 

When Frequency sells their commercial product will they administer it in one ear at a time or both ears? I remember hearing that early LASIK services would only allow you to do one eye at a time. Now they only offer both eye treatments at an appointment.

(Note I said when a commercial product is available and not if)

 

Phase 2 trials haven't even started yet so no one has any idea how it would be administered in the event that it becomes available.

 

I'm hopeful that restoring input (by regenerating hair cells in the case of FX) will alleviate hyperacusis as well as tinnitus. I think it's very telling that a high dose of sodium salicylate (aspirin) induces hyperacusis and tinnitus as well as moderate hearing loss by disrupting hair cell function (presumably triggering central gain compensation) - and when it wears off and hair cell function is restored the hyperacusis and tinnitus go away.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2014.00206/full
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2012.00028/full

 

Hello fellas, I'm spying here for a while and I finally made an account today.

I've got one question about Frequency Therapeutics : let's assuming their drugs work pretty well. If I have bad hearing loss above 15 000 Hz and severe to profound hearing loss above 16 000 Hz to 20 000 Hz can this treatment have effect on this range of frequencies (15 000Hz - 20 000 Hz) ?

Or all the frequencies that i've already lost will be lost forever ?

Thanks and sorry if my english sucks I try to do my best

 

These frequencies would be considered "not important" when it comes to general hearing in my opinion. At least when it comes to communication and human voices in general. How ever, these frequencies are located pretty early in the cochlea, meaning the drug will have a good chance to recover these frequencies, given the drug works and all other conditions are met. There is no way to say by now how this will work and if it will work... hopefully we will know more very soon. Then again, they have said that severe/profound hearing loss most likely will not regenerate.

 

Thats actually my hearing loss too, i really hope it works for that case (and very low freq as well).

 

Really appreciate your consideration for my question and sorry if this kind of questions has been already posted here but i was a bit lost. I think the best option for me is to be positive and wait to see the news in the future!

 

I hope so too. 10 kHz - 16 kHz are quite important for music and if this can help with tinnitus it would be just amazing !

I think i'm gonna stop talking.

Have a good day

 

Yeah thats one of the reasons why i am interested in this research - because of music and the fact that all my hobbies are dedicated to music. Losing high end sucks a lot for music production.

 

Exactly in the same situation. I'm afraid that this passion will kill my hearing forever ...

 

I'm a senior citizen but my hearing is phenomenal. Tinnitus is a miserable inconvenience but hasn't impaired my hearing. I'm usually a good natured gal, but the hissing is driving me nuts

 

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