Possible Breakthrough in Restoring Hearing Loss, in Mice

Researchers have discovered a way to regenerate hair cells in the cochlea.

During one's lifetime, a series of insults (e.g., loud noises, toxic drugs, viral infections) gradually depletes the number cochlear hair cells, leading to hearing loss. Cochlear stem cells do not replace this loss.
A team from Harvard and MIT identified a “cocktail” of small molecules that produced substantial expansion of cochlear stem cells and induced those stem cells to become hair cells. The induced cells all had the elements necessary for hearing (i.e., hair cells that transduce signals to nerves). When the technique was applied to healthy human ear tissue (an explant from cancer surgery), it led to the generation of human hair cells, in vitro. Finally, explants of entire cochleas from mice were treated with the small molecules, and treatment induced both more stem cells and differentiation of the stem cells into hair cells. Hair-cell restoration was achieved even in cochleas in which hair cells had been badly damaged by gentamicin.

Credit: NEJM Journal watch

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