Inner Ear Hair Cell Regeneration — Maybe We Can Know More

Hearing Restoration Project: A promise to...

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4513558/

Re-reading your post and the frontiers paper I'm a little confused on why Affichem or another company isn't also exploring GDNF, Glial cell-line derived neurotrophic factors. In their study this growth factor seemed to both increase SGN density and the functionality of the SGNs. It maybe that Affichem wanted only an non-peptide product? Still it with these results and the development of growth factor NeuroD1 by Dr. Gong Chen it feels like the hearing restoration lab community is weirdly leaving promising neurotrophic factor options on the table and not continuing their development. Maybe its an over emphasis in funding and effort on hair cell recovery??? Is that a plausible explanation or is there some other biological reason to not try these factors in mice/primates and then humans? Better diagnostics like uOCT that could determine exact levels of hair and synaptic losses in the average hearing loss patient would be immensely valuable right now.

 

Yes. I agree. I can not make sense of it any more. Professor Heller mentioned 100 years also.
Perhaps he wants to discourage people that contact him for participating in clinical trials.

 

Here's a question for you guys

Let's say you have t in one ear or both and no hearing loss (or at least not measurable) and you think it was brought on by loud noise. If it became available would you qualify for treatment? Would it help?!

 

This is a thread to talk about new research, not hypotheticals about nonexistent treatments. Perhaps you should start a thread in support for a topic like this.

 

Aaron, I am talking about new research, asking opinions if this research materialised into treatment, then what sort of patient group it would cover. Asking whether if people thought it would be useful whether there no obvious hearing loss present, what are there thoughts it could treat tinnitus through noise exposure with no noticeable hearing loss.

There are members on this forum with varying degrees of hearing loss and those with no detectable loss and this is a very valid question regarding this research.

Also, I am aware the main aim of this research is to reverse hearing loss however this being a tinnitus forum, and tinnitus and damaged hearing cells seem to go hand in hand, offers validity to my questions and speculation from people.

 

You don't mention any specific research, and until relatively recently this was a thread to talk about actual research not opinions about inclusion criteria in unannounced trials (which of course precede any treatment).

There's plenty of discussion about this in the Frequency Therapeutics thread.

 

Are any of these companies attempting to repair auditory nerve damage rather than just hair cells? As I'm understanding it, auditory nerve damage is much more sensitive to noise and is damaged first before any inner hair cells? Hence why we those who have tinnitus and no measurable loss (hidden hearing loss)

Shine some light here I'm way behind.

 

Something like this seems very possible, I bet it won't be long until we get something like this.

 

That is what Rivolta "claims" to have achieved in an animal model. Strictly speaking, its not an ear disorder per se, but a neuropathy that prevents normal auditory information from reaching the brain.

 

Company called Decibel

 

Guys check this out:

The future of medicine is inside these chips

https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/human-organs-on-chips/

 

Another paper (well, "letter") from the "ear in a dish" group at IU/Harvard: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.3840.html

Press release here: http://news.medicine.iu.edu/releases/2017/05/iu-researchers-inner-ear.shtml

And a cool picture: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49324/title/Image-of-the-Day--Ears-in-a-Dish/

Seems good if they can generate multiple inner ears in one process.

I am still unclear as to whether they think they have generated a complete inner ear with functional auditory hair cells. The press release implies that, but when they mention specifics, it is always about vestibular hair cells - this was true in the earlier papers as well.

 

Im glad they already using CRISPR–Cas9 in hearing research
It becomes widespread technique quickly

 

http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/05/02/texas-research-diabetes-cure

Another application of gene therapy. If this becomes commonplace it would at least make the regulatory process for ear gene therapy on a human a little easier.

 

This has nothing to do with the topic of this thread and would be more appropriate in "Health Talk".

This thread would be come pointless if I (or others) posted links to every gene therapy, stem cell, signalling pathway, or other story that comes along.

 

Yea I was debating where to put this story. Still I don't think this just another gene therapy for a unique disease. Type 2 diabetes is very prevalent and thus if there is a commonplace gene therapy treatment for that disease the regulatory and investment processes might become more sophisticated and receptive to for other gene therapies applications aka gene therapy for hearing.

 

It may well turn out that others at more advanced stages of research will have therapies that are transferable.

 

This thread would be come pointless if I (or others) posted links to every gene therapy, stem cell, signalling pathway, or other story that comes along.[/QUOTE]

Nice one for the article. I love coming on here and reading the posts.

 

And yet this has nothing to do with the ear, and that same rationale could apply to many, many stories on gene therapy, stem cells, etc.

Moreover, this was a study in mice. It's not like it is a Phase III trial or something that is coming to market. It is no more advanced than the work on Usher Syndrome or papers published on gene therapy in mice models.

 

Thanks for posting the article.

Now that I have looked at it, the innovation on their previous work is the use of hESCs and hiPSCs rather than mouse stem cells.

At the same time, I read this "In addition, much like mouse organoids, the hPSC-derived organoids appear to form vestibular sensory epithelia by default; thus, additional signaling manipulation will be needed to initiate cochlear organogenesis" as indicating that they have produced vestibular but not auditory hair cells. This is disappointing

On the positive side, the initial paper was submitted on July 31, 2016 so though they likely had to work on revisions to this paper, they have had time to work on this problem and know more than is in this paper.

On the down side, they did not generate a lot of vestibular hair cells, and the process is not quick - it appears to take on the order of 100 days.

Will be interesting to see if the next paper uses mouse or human stem cells for the development of the cochlea.

 

I would disagree with "disappointing", any cell based success in the ear is monster news. This was all just sci-fi not so long ago. Vestibular research is decades behind cochlear investigations, they have lived in the slipstream of auditory science for a long time, nothing wrong with the reverse occurring from time to time. I still suspect research of the eye to turn over something big for us is due course. Not all those in research think in straight lines.

 

Hough Ear Institue Research Update.
It sounds interesting, they also wrote once, that they will apply for clinical testing at the end of 2017.
http://houghear.org/research-update-may-2017/

 

Very interesting. Though I do not see what component will be transported by the nanoparticle and as far as I can see no mention of a clinical trial.

 

clinical trials are mentioned here, but I wouldn't bet.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...y-from-the-hough-ear-institute-300150403.html

 

Hop this is not a double po.
http://www.dailyuw.com/science/article_f063de9c-231a-11e7-8573-8352c66ab78e.html

 

Just a quick question, when they mention a cure/treatment for chronic hearing loss, would that also include the acute noise induced hearing loss such as one coming from military acts (loud blasts , gun fires) concerts etc. ?

 

I would suggest, that will also be treatable. Chronic means only, that the damage in the inner ear or tinnitus has established for a long time.
Let's hope things are running smoothly, it really sounds somewhat too easy, but who knows.
I always see statements Standford vs. Harvard, Stanford is much more cautious and Harvard much more optimisitic.

 

I have a question about the regeneration process

Supposing it works and new hair cells appear, will they replace the old dead cells ?
And what will happen for the dead ones ? Will they go away ?

I understand the process of hair cells regeneration but I still don't get what will happen for dead cells.

"Replacing" them means they will disappear, or maybe the new ones will "put them away" ?

 

Dead hair cells are replaced by supporting cells. The details of what happens during regeneration may differ by approach, but the leading idea at the moment is to induce supporting cells to convert into hair cells.