New Stem Cell Transplantation Method Restores Damaged Auditory Pathways

For more information:

Blurb: http://ata.org/news/news/new-stem-cell-transplantation-method-restores-damaged-auditory-pathways
Summary: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26080415
Full article: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/26/E3431.full

 

There you go little by little 5 to 10 we have a cure

 

Every news just gives me hope, i'll keep positive on that note!

 

svg1204 Hey man. Hows your progress? Do you still have a ringing? Last I heard from you, you were going to an ENT.

 

Wow, this seems like really good news and makes a lot of sense to me. I think they are onto something here.

 

The most important is that, assuming it works, it will not only fix hair cells, but the entire auditory nerve, even restoring connections to the brain. A full restoration of the hearing system! I assume this covers all tinnitus and hearing loss cases, from acoustic trauma to microvascular compression!

It would be THE treatment indeed! Right now, it seems too good to be true...

 

You nailed it! Hopefully they start human trials soon. Fingers crossed, and something to hope for once again.

 

Hey my friend I'm doing good my t has been low, I think I found the cause the tmj specialist said he really thought my tinnitus is due to a problem I have with my jaw obviously, specially the left side which is where I have my t , it's apart from the skill bone and flat from all the grinding and clenching, what looks like triggered was the root canal that left the crown seating higher on the left side making my entire jaw miss aligned.

I started treatment for that yesterday so we will see how that goes, but I can't complain my t has been pretty low in volumen and when it spikes it's bearable or just annoying

There's been a few times in the last week that my t has been gone for a few hours , I also found that if I sleep on my right side,,when I wake up my tinnitus is bearly there , but in exchange I think and I'm not sure I also get or hear a sound on my right side or could be my left side t that feels like I'm the right side because I plug my right ear and sounds pure silence.

How about you my friend how is everything going

And about the article I keep telling you we WILL have a cure in the next 5 to 10 I'm sure in 5 there will be at least a treatment, to manage the main symptom which is the sound ,there already are drugs that help with that somehow and to some degree and are not even made for tinnitus

 

svg1204 Thats good to hear that you may have found the cause and thats also good that your t is low. Better to have no t at all but if your gonna have it, its good that its low. Mine is really loud most days but I do get days where it quiets down. I had an audiogram recently and have loss in the higher frequencies on my left side. Makes sense because thats where the t likes to nag at me. I really hope you are correct in terms of a beneficial treatment in the coming years. It's just so annoying because my hearing is something I never really thought about. Take care man and best wishes.

 

I think none of us thought of our hearing until this happened, and hopefully I've found things that help keep my t low, things that spike it up, foods, at the same time I do hope the tmj treatment works.

Also if you have hearing loss in the high frequencies wouldn't a hearing aid help? And if you get days when it quiets down try to remember what you did that day, what you ate , etc, their might be a key to keeping it low I would think like I've found in mine already a few things that help keep it low.

And about the cure or treatment now we have stuff that helps that we didn't had a few years back, so put the same exponentially like medicine and technology grows and think what we will have, all the already available medicines we have that seem to work at some level with t, the ones being found everyday like ketamine, and all the new research and findings being done every day.

Someone told me here "look all the years and they haven't found the cure for cancer, and some other disease", but actually they do have found some vaccines for some cancers, patients are surviving more than ever, screening options are wider and more efficient, and treatments are widely available.

Now tinnitus is a growing problem in many countries is just that it's been only recently tackled like it's being tackled now because now is an everybody's problem, people using handsets, earbuds, etc, etc is giving tinnitus to even kids.

So look at all the research being done, recent findings and is obvious a cure or a treatment will be available in th next few years, since pharmaceutical companies love money now they see this as a billions dollars segment

 

Dubbyaman. I think svg1204 is right. If you have loss in the high frequencies a hearing aid will amplify them and it could make your T go away. By wearing my HA's I can keep my T at bay. I have had HA's all my life and I never had noticeable T until recently when I got pretty stressed out. I think the hearing aides were amplifying the lower frequencies all the time so it kept the T from bothering me.

 

You know what I love about this site? People's amazing ability to stay on topic.

 

earsnothappyI agree. I don't think people mean to do it. It just happens so lets get back on point. I would gladly take part in something like this. It beats waiting centuries for a medication.

 

Did you know that bumble bees mate for life? };-)

 

Hi,

this is a new method to do it, it seems to be in early stage ...


http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-10-ear-hints.html

Study of inner ear development hints at way to restore hearing and balance
October 26, 2015




Ksenia Gnedeva, a postdoc in A. James Hudspeth's lab, began by examining changes in gene expression within the lining of the utricle, an organ within the inner ear responsible for detecting linear acceleration by the body. Utricle hair cells develop in the same way as those responsible for hearing. Above, utricle hair cells (red) of a mouse at the time of birth. Credit: Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience at The Rockefeller University/PNAS

Loud noise, trauma, infections, plain old aging—many things can destroy hair cells, the delicate sensors of balance and sound within the inner ear. And once these sensors are gone, that's it; the delicate hair cells don't grow back in humans, leading to hearing loss and problems with balance.

But scientists hope to find a way to regenerate these cells by examining how they develop in the first place. New research at Rockefeller University, in A. James Hudspeth's Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience, has identified two genes pivotal to the production of hair cells in young mice, who, just like human babies, lose the ability to generate these sensors shortly after birth. The study was published the week of October 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

First author, Ksenia Gnedeva, a postdoc in the lab, began by examining changes in gene expression in the utricle, a hair cell-lined organ within the inner ear that detects motion. She saw that the activity of two genes dropped dramatically shortly after the mice were born and hair cells ceased to develop in their utricles. These genes code for the proteins Sox4 and Sox11, which play a role in shaping the identity cells assume by regulating the expression of other genes.

Gnedeva tested these proteins' involvement in hair cell formation by altering their expression. When both genes were shut down, she found that the entire inner ear, not just the utricle, developed abnormally. In other experiments, she turned on the genes in older mice whose hair cells were fully matured, and discovered that this gene activation could induce the production of new hair cells within a fully developed utricle.




One of the two proteins, Sox4 (magenta), appears at the outer edge of the developing utricle, and occasionally within the nuclei of new hair cells (green). Proliferating support cells, which in some cases become hair cells, appear in white.

She is now exploring the series of molecular interactions that normally lead to the activation of these proteins and the steps that follow. "Our ultimate goal is to find a target that would allow us to restore hair cells later on in life. It appears possible that these proteins, or perhaps other steps in the same pathway, might be potential targets," she says.




Mice that did not produce Sox11 and Sox4 had malformed inner ear structures, as shown by the lining, or sensory epithelium (green), that contains hair cells. For example, in normal development (left), the cochlea (circular structure on top) and utricle (circular structure immediately below) are severely malformed in the absence of the proteins (right).

 

they have a project at Stanford to restore hearing also with stem cells. Was this student patient then healed of hearing damage with stem cells from this Korean company?

 

Amazing. I think the cure will be here in at least less than 10 years. Things like this really give me hope. :3

 

I imagine something like this would take longer than developing a drug, but who knows.

 

Quite significantly more so.

 

This new feature aims to connect Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) supporters and constituents to its Hearing Restoration Project (HRP) consortium researchers. Spotlight On provides an opportunity to get to know the life and work of the leading researchers working collaboratively in pursuit of a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus.

https://hearinghealthfoundation.org/blog?blogid=169

 

My question is... how sure are we that restoring hearing will make T go away? Is it possible hearing could be restored but that the T could stay? T seems to be pretty ingrained in the brain! What a let down that would be!

 

The theory goes that your brain turns up the gain on frequencies lost with hearing lost = T. Regain those frequency, and the brain can turn the gain back down...in theory.

 

Not sure at all..

 

It's possible T could stay.

 

I actually wouldn't mind it... the tinnitus is sure annoying, but having your hearing back to good would make you notice it less if you're hearing sounds at the same frequency as your tinnitus.

It'd be surprising if that didn't spurn a long term improvement in the tinnitus given how plasticity of the brain works.

 

As far as i ve understood, tinnitus is created by neurons which are not getting any signals from the hair cells (died or damaged).Logic would say that if we restore the hair cells ,then the neurons will get back signals and stop firing tinnitus.

so normally if hearing is back,there is big chance that tinnutis will go away

 

Why do I have the feeling that since this isn't a drug where a company is going to make a pile of cash if it's successful that research on this is going to take a very very very long time. Is there a way this procedure could be patentable? So there's incentive to push this along?

 

At some point we will have to abandon the pharma approach and go towards real treatments that repair the damage or reverse a biological process. As the overall technology progresses the technology needed for those kind of treatments will become cheaper and more affordable. The question is only how long it will take. But it is the next step in the evolution of medical science.

I believe that nano technology is going to revolutionize the field of medicine within only a few decades. We are going to be able to inject small "robots" into the bloodstream that are going to be able to repair pretty much anything in our bodies at the cellular level by either delivering drugs to specific cells and perhaps even repair damaged tissues.

 

This is of course an important point (regenerative medicine vs. traditional pharma). However, I wouldn't have expected anything less from a molecular biologist...!

As it happens, and via contacts from my first stem cell treatment, I came to know of a company called BioQuark (www.bioquark.com). It is the type of company that you would almost certainly never come across unless I told you about it (which I have now). For a number of patients of the first stem cell clinic I was treated at, they would seek treatment simply for preventive rather than curative reasons (i.e. rejuvenation purposes). Stem cells correct a number of common problems within the human body - such as autoimmune disorders - that are present from birth or which may have a trigger later on in life (e.g. an infection). In both cases, genetics tend to play a role by making the individual predisposed. For this reason, stem cells may help in relation to conditions such as eczema, asthma, arthritis, MS, uveitis, and many other problems that today due not really have a good treatment protocol (with traditional pharma/interventions). Of course, a doctor wearing a fancy white lab coat would immediately tell you otherwise, and, write up a prescription for something with (almost) as many side-effects as the disease itself.

In addition, Pfizer invested some $100M back in 2009:

www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n1/full/nbt0109-10c.html

To be honest, I do not know what the outcome is (haven't checked). But it is a substantial sum of money.

 

Yes there is a lot going on that we will see the fruit of eventually. Stem cell research is exciting. I almost did my final project work at a lab where they study the brain. They have found stem cells within parts of the brain that actually develop into new nerve cells as well as astrocytes and other types of supporting cells. They found this predominantly in parts of the brain that is connected to memory. They did all this some 10 years ago and it was exciting findings at the time since the brain was thought as being an organ that doesn't regenerate or heal. And this is not entirely true.

However the stem cell research has unfortunatley been held back for years because of religous and political reasons. At least in the US and that's where the big bucks have been when it comes to medical research.

There is also gene therapy. Gene therapy is not new but the technology has had to mature. There is always that risk of cancer they have to sort out.

What I was talking about is nano technology. The possibility to construct things only a handful of atoms in size which can be programmed to do specific tasks in the body. There is some good things being done in the field but we're still at least a decade or two away from anything close to what I'm talking about.