Hough Ear Institute's Hair Cell Regeneration Project

I'm thinkin' a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.

 

That $500 million should go to someone like Josef Rauschecker instead.

 

I mean they could have highlighted some of the patients in the Phase 1 trial who had their hearing loss or tinnitus reduce which would have allowed them to sell the rights to NHPN-1010 faster.

If they want to sell the rights faster, they need to highlight more successful patients or do some more tests on people who have hearing loss, tinnitus or hyperacusis.

$500 million is a lot of money to invest in a drug which may not work. Unless there are more success stories, it would be really hard for a company to buy the rights.

 

Where are these study results and what were the outcomes? I can't find them on this thread.

 

I don’t think they have released the study results out in detail other than stating that Phase 1 was completed and they were going to move onto Phase 2.

I would be surprised if they didn’t do any hearing tests such as speech-in-noise and audiograms in the Phase 1 trial to find out if the drug works or not.

Doesn’t it need to show a bit of efficacy before they can move onto Phase 2?

 

Phase I Clinical Trial for a Novel, Orally Available Therapeutic that Addresses Noise-Induced Hearing Loss

Basically you take it before exposure or VERY soon after. They never had anything for us. Complete liars.

 

I asked Hough Ear Institute how they calculated the costs of their trials; that $500M dollar amount also includes production and marketing costs of NHPN-1010 if it was approved by the FDA and out in the market for people to use.

Phase II is a small group, testing efficacy ($10-20M) and Phase III is a large group, testing efficacy ($150-350M).

I also asked them whether they had completed hearing tests such as speech-in-noise and audiograms in the Phase 1 trial but from their reply it doesn’t seem they had done any or had any patients with hearing loss or tinnitus in that trial.

Feels like a waste of a Phase 1 trial without having patients with hearing loss or tinnitus. They really did not use the money that they had efficiently. If they had tested it with patients with hearing loss or tinnitus, they could have more buyers willing to complete the Phase 2 & Phase 3 trials if there were improvements in the Phase 1 trial.

They need to learn from Frequency Therapeutics on how they were able to gather funds to complete multiple trials.

 

I hate those scammy nonprofits. This world, and particularly this hellhole called United States is fully of greedy vipers that steal from you under guise of doing good. If there is hell, I hope they will get a front row spot in there.

 

I’m undecided whether I would consider Hough Ear Institute lying about NHPN-1010 working for hearing loss, tinnitus and hyperacusis. It’s up to Otologic Pharmaceuticals to either find a buyer or, if they can’t find a buyer, they should be testing NHPN-1010 on compassionate use patients who have severe tinnitus and hyperacusis. If they did this, they would be able to find a buyer in no time if the patients’ quality of life was much better after getting the treatment.

It pisses me off that they did not do speech-in-noise or audiograms in the Phase 1 trial and did not have patients who suffer from hearing loss or tinnitus. No wonder they can’t find a buyer as they have no clue how to manage their money efficiently.

 

The issue is why would we donate money to Hough Ear Institute? What have they proven their treatment does? They have something they claim is otoPROTECTIVE and at best must be used within hours of acoustic trauma. Show any evidence of benefit to people with chronic tinnitus or hearing loss rather than ONE person's testimony? Show me!

 

Why would they want to test their "novel" new drug on people with tinnitus or hearing loss BEFORE getting their $500M?

Isn’t there a danger that would be exposing the true efficacy of their drug?

My opinion; this drug doesn't have any efficacy and they know that. It's just a money scavenging exercise now.

 

Just speculating here:

Their target patient is someone who has been exposed to recent loud noise or someone who is about to be exposed to such. That fits the profile of military personnel. War has got a lot louder and more push-button... so if a research firm can or might come up with something to lower the chances of hearing damage, tinnitus etc., perhaps they can persuade the government to give them research funding.

Just a suggestion.

 

Sorry. I don’t buy it.

Why would the biggest military complex in the world, the US military, invest $500M in a pill that must be taken continuously in a war zone to protect soldiers’ hearing where supply chain may be interrupted and the pills rendered non-deliverable, rather than $500M in a regenerative hearing solution that restores hearing once it’s lost.

Hough Ear Institute is a scam. Nothing more. Anybody defending these charlatans is an idiot. Their developers and scientists know absolutely F-all, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

 

It’s up to Otologic Pharmaceuticals (OP) to find a buyer for NHPN-1010. Hough Ear Institute (HEI) can’t really do much since they sold the rights to the drug to OP. The heat should really be on OP, and not HEI.

I think HEI should have done better at protecting the rights for NHPN-1010. If OP can’t find a buyer/not willing to do the trials themselves, the rights of the drug should have gone back to HEI, and not OP.

I don’t care whether NHPN-1010 or other hearing regeneration drugs needs to be taken continuously or not, or if they are in tablet or injection form. As long as it works by restoring hearing and reducing tinnitus and hyperacusis, that’s all that matters to me.

 

On the contrary, sustaining evidence isn't what they need help with. I bet with their current approach, they could rapidly concoct a mountain of evidence consistent with an effective treatment for any hearing-related condition (not excluding tinnitus) at the whiff of profit. That's where the state of scientific methodology is in such decline. If you're lucky, you might get to spend $500 million on a hypothesis backed up by 'testimonies'. Without fettered by empirical rigor even as far as animal studies goes, being oblivious to what the gold standard of 'high-quality evidence' means in academic nomenclature, ignoring even the most basic standards of an observational study, as if the last 50 years of sophistication in rigorous methodology never happened, you might even actually get away with it. (Consumers don't certainly know anything about rigor, as you yourself happen to demonstrate.) Think Frequency Therapeutics. Think Theranos. For me personally, there was one academic write-up (in information technology) which wasn't particularly rewarding given the personnel, while proficient in their field, were indifferent about how you set up your criteria, as long as your observations were linearly consistent with it and in focus. That's no different from how quack science gains credibility. The desperation with which Hough Ear Institute is trying to make themselves appealing to investors suggests they don't have anything to justify $500 million except testimonials which are by definiton low quality evidence or, as implied in the British Medical Journal in the review of Archie Cochran's book Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services (1972):

"the hero of the book is the randomized control trial, and the villains are the clinicians in the "care" part of the National Health Service (NHS) who either fail to carry out such trials or succeed in ignoring the results if they do not fit in with their own preconceived ideas"

 

Sometime in late 2019 or early 2020 I donated a modest amount to Hough Ear Institute and several other research organizations (Thanos Tzounopoulos, Susan Shore, Josef Rauschecker).

Since then, Hough Ear Institute has been the only one to consistently/constantly ask for more. I bet they’ve spent 20% of what I gave them just on postage asking me for another donation. Screams desperation.

 

Hough Ear Institute is more dead than Frequency Therapeutics.

 

I don’t think there is any point in donating more money to Hough Ear Institute or Otologic Pharmaceuticals. I just hope that the next buyer for NHPN-1010 doesn’t ask for more money like Oblato.

 

It's a little bit confusing, but the "regeneration injection AOK-1" seems to be the one Hough Ear Institute licensed last year for further development to Boehringer Ingelheim via Ascend BioVentures (Autigen).

Portfolio - Ascend BioVentures

Autigen Announces Collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim to Discover and Develop Novel Treatments for Hearing Loss | Business Wire

Additionally, Boehringer Ingelheim is funding RINRI Therapeutics and Acousia Therapeutics in the hearing field.

Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund | Investments in Regenerative Medicine (boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com)

Hopefully, something will work in the future.

 

Any estimate when the "regeneration injection AOK-1" will be available? I couldn't find any timeline or update on their website.

 

I couldn't find any information about it. It’s in the pre-clinical stage, so there is a very long way to go.

 

Like others have said before, I’m not so sure if you should count on anything from Hough Ear Institute. There are no annual reports since 2021. No updates on the website/Twitter/news.

 

$50M is laughable but $500M is hysterical laughter.