Overview: Promising Future Treatments for Tinnitus and Hearing Loss

Hello, all. This is my first post here after lurking a lot this summer. I just had some questions about my specific case and potential future treatment options.

Here's the rundown on my situation:

- My tinnitus started in 2012, with spikes in 2015 and 2020. To this day I don't know exactly what caused my tinnitus, but I suspect acoustic trauma. The 2015 spike was from a gaming headset (moronic, I know) and I have no idea what caused the 2020 spike but I suspect it may be the Stelara I take for Crohn's disease. I don't even know if it's ototoxic though tbh.

- I have been blessed with tinnitus that includes both a high and low frequency.

- I have visual snow as well as hyperacusis in both ears

- I have the sensation of fullness in both ears all the time

- On a standard audiogram, I don't show any hearing loss and my audiologist tells me I have "excellent hearing". I'm totally aware this does not at all mean I don't have hearing damage that isn't detectable by a standard test. I'm sure I do.

- My high frequency tinnitus tone is somatic and can altered with movements of my jaw.

- The low tone is really low and in a very quiet environment it literally feels like there's an engine in my head and I feel my head vibrating. I've seen others on here with a similar sound but it seems fairly rare.

My question is which treatment options that are on the horizon should I be focused on? Also, is there any evidence low frequency tinnitus has causes that differ from the classic high pitched tinnitus? I wonder if certain treatments in the future would only treat one of my tones.

 

For neurotinnitus (non-somatic tinnitus), I'm keeping an eye on three Frequency Therapeutics, Otonomy, and Hough, which are initiating or are in the process of Phase 2 clinical trials. From what I understand they all propose restoration of the cochlear hair cells which they did pre-clinical tests on animals. We don't really know what specific frequencies these restoration do (but FX-322 suggests it will restore high or ultra high frequencies). Most of these companies' phase 2 trials will end by this year or next year. If they gather more data and refine their delivery/drug, they might restore lower frequencies too but I suspect that will be much harder.

But, who knows? Who even knows if this will even help tinnitus? My least hopeful is that if it does restore hearing, it will at least suppress some tinnitus since it will allow people to hear better background noises to mask their tinnitus. Let's all hope that everything is as promising as these companies make it out to be.

 

I am sure that once we get an actual cure, everyone who browses this forum will become aware of it within a month or two.

To answer your question, I think @kelpiemsp got cured after participating in a trial of Susan Shore's device.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...on-effect-dont-do-it.40880/page-4#post-530200

 

It was Lim's device from University of Minnesota, not Shore's device. They are similar. Lim moved on to Lenire for now though, and I don't know if his work is being continued. I would not bet on Lenire, though.

 

FX-322 is doing hair cells, Hough is working on the synapses, and Otonomy has drugs that are trying to do both separately, OTO-313 and OTO-413. OTO-313 didn't seem to work that well and targeted the acute stage. OTO-413 looks more promising. These cover the hearing restoration side.

Then there's Shore's device, which needs a phase 2 trial but has been delayed by COVID-19.

And finally, in the future there is Reformulated Trobalt for safety and Gateway Biotech's pill to watch.

 

OTO-313 is not regenerative. It acts on the NMDA receptor.

For otonomy, OTO-413 is for synapses and OTO-6xx (in pre-clinical) is for hair cells.

 

Overview of drugs to watch:

Hair cell drugs:

FX-322: Inner and outer hair cells. In phase 2A. They have had positive testimonials for tinnitus in phase 1 and now are measuring it to get hard data in phase 2A.

CGF-166: Novartis' drug. This drug required a really destructive surgical technique to implement and the trial continuation was postponed twice (see thread for more info).

OTO-6xx: In pre-clinical. Seems like they will file an IND soon since they are hyping it a lot on corporate presentations.

Hough anti-sense mRNA therapy: Hair cell restoration of some sort. Little public data at this time.

Synapse drugs:

OTO-413. In phase 1/2A. Results should be out end of this year.

Hough Pill: Between phase 1 and 2. Timeline unknown.

PIPE-505: recruiting for phase 1 now. May also regrow outer hair cells to some degree.

Other:

Dr. Thanos Tzounopoulos' reformulation of Trobalt to make it safer and more specific for the target ion channel.

Oto-313: acts on NMDA receptor and is specifically a tinnitus treatment (but being tested on acute cases).

Sound Pharmaceuticals: They have glutathione peroxidase inducing small molecule. Currently being tested for Meniere's.

For Meniere's they saw improvements in tinnitus even with chronic cases:

https://www.audiology-worldnews.com...drug-to-relieve-tinnitus-in-meniere-s-disease

They are now testing the drug for acute noise induced cases concurrently but i think if your tinnitus has a significant inflammatory component, this pill might help even chronic cases.

Other companies to watch:

• Gateway Biotechnology
  
• Decibel Therapeutics: They have a new hearing loss drug in pre-clinical.
• Akouos: They are using gene therapy mostly for genetic deafness but they have a drug in pre-clinical using a viral vectured technique for hearing restoration too -- this technique whether by this company or others could be used in more severe hearing loss cases or eventually to transduce fibroblasts into support cells)

 

I'm hoping for FX 322... seems to be pretty close to something real, and hopefully they can find a solution for restoring lower frequencies in the cochlea. I'm going to try to get in to their phase 3 trials if possible.