Scientists Close to Treating Hearing Loss Using Gene Therapy

Around 24.5 million people in the United States, aged 12 years and older, suffer from mild hearing loss while 10.7 million people 12 years and older live with moderate hearing loss. Up to 1.8 million people older than 11 years in the country suffer from moderate hearing loss while more than 400 million people worldwide have some degree of hearing loss.

Although there is currently no cure for age-related hearing loss, people can use listening devices, such as hearing aids, to reduce the severity of the condition. In most cases, most of these people suffer from sensorineural hearing loss, which is typically caused by damage to the hair cells that transmit external sounds to the brain from the inner ear.

Since mammals cannot regenerate these cochlea hair cells, sensorineural hearing loss typically can’t be treated using conventional therapies. However, a research team from Havard Medical School’s Mass Eye and Ear may have come up with a solution that would allow for the regeneration of cochlea hair cells and the reversal of hearing loss.

The study was led by Eaton-Peabody Laboratories associate professor of otolaryngology and associate scientist, Zheng-Yi Chen, with the research team recently announcing that it had developed a cocktail of molecules that could regenerate dead hair cells in mice models. Since the inner hair cells are the ones that act as sensory receptors and transmit sounds to the brain, the researchers posit that they may be close to a treatment that could alleviate hearing loss in humans.

Chen said that the team’s findings were “extremely exciting” as they provided researchers with the means of dealing with a problem that has essentially been untreatable for decades. The ability to regenerate hair cells has long eluded scientists, but the recent findings, published in “The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” opened the door for further research into a possible cure for hearing loss.

In a prior study, Chen analyzed chicken and starfish to establish the pathways that prompted the cell division which resulted in the generation of hair cells in the inner ear. The team found two molecular signaling pathways that caused inner ear cells to divide into more hair cells when they were activated. Dubbed the Notch and Myc pathways, these two molecular pathways would need drug therapy to be activated in humans.

Chen and his team created a concoction of siRNA molecules and chemical compounds, and after administering it to mice models with damaged inner ear hair cells, they found that it could cause the inner ears to regenerate.

Further research will be needed to see if the medicine can effectively treat hearing loss in humans.

For patients with other forms of hearing defects, including COVID-related tinnitus, help could come sooner given that entities such as Jupiter Wellness Inc. (NASDAQ: JUPW) have formulations in advanced stages of development to treat this threat to people’s hearing ability.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Jupiter Wellness Inc. (NASDAQ: JUPW) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/JUPW

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