"I Would Not Believe Anyone Who Says That a Cure Is Just Around the Corner"

It's likely a long journey to find a causal therapy for a complicated problem.
All approaches are absolutely new strategies and not comparable with tradinional medicine where you mostly pump a chemical all over the body and the same cocktail arrives in the fingers like in the brain and you want to treat something in the heart.
So I can imagine, that with gene therapy or molecular therapy you will have almost no side effects as long there is no adverse effect in general.
So maybe if there is a save way to apply these new therapies, the procedures for and FDA ok might be complete different.
But first, it needs to establish

 

A while ago I posted about scientists in Sweden inventing a GABA pump that is very small, biodegradable and can be surgically inserted on to the spine or in the brain and pump GABA to a small area for several years. And as you might know already tinnitus and GABA are related. GABA is the body's inhibitory transmitter and a decrease in inhibitory transmission is thought to play a major role in tinnitus. At least that is what Prof. Tzounopoulos (the man behind SF0034) has stated.

The use they had in mind is chronic pain and epilepsy. However I believe it just might work in tinnitus as well due to the similarities in these conditions.

They are currently making this pump ready for human trials. So in a few years we might see those kind of solutions emerging.

My post about this can be found here: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...-a-gaba-pump-for-chronic-pain-and-more.12411/

 

Do not get me wrong but f*ck this tittle.

Who cares about a complete cure if we can already reduce its volume with Trobalt or other potassium channel openers etc. SF0034 will be the answer for an efficient treatment.

 

So revisiting this thread in 2017 and the Audion therapeutics trail has opened recruitment today to test inner hair cell regeneration - was he wrong? We're moving into human clinical trials to treat deafness? Surely that is an indicator we are a step closer to a cure?

 

Of course, but every day we are "a step closer to a cure", by definition. Just like every day you are a day closer to your death. That doesn't make it a particularly useful statement.
The expression "just around the corner" is so vague that it can just as well mean one month or a decade.

 

Well what I meant to highlight that Dr Heller was wrong to predict human trials as early as 2020 as it's happening now in 2017

 

Always insightful. I adore you @GregCA

 

He was close

 

No - he alledgedly said he thought 2020 was unrealistic - obviously thinking it to be much later!

 

Sorry I thought you meant he predicted c. Trials on 2020.

 

I don't know about you or anybody else but I find it somewhat bizarre and worrying that experts can't forecast something like that regarding he was only meant to have said it in 2013.

 

I think it is very difficult to predict when there will be effective treatment or cure with tinnitus. But what seems to be evident that huge unexpected progress is being made, we must bear in mind that research is multidisciplinary, and a qualitative leap in scientific or technological discipline may imply a qualitative change in research.for example you can already generate ear tissue in unlimited quantities, and therefore you could play with it, without using humans. It is an unexpected advance, which greatly facilitates the testing of drugs and others in the ear.

What seems wonderful is already being tested with humans to restore hearing simply by applying molecules. Who would have signed 5 years ago? What would the scientific community have said about it?