Many people living with hearing loss benefit from using hearing aids, cochlear implants and other hearing loss solutions, as well as from working on tactics for better communication. However, leading scientists and biopharmaceutical companies are hoping to provide even more options to people living with hearing loss.
In fact, the cover story of the April 7, 2014 issue of the magazine Chemical & Engineering News focused on current innovative efforts in medicine to protect against and treat hearing loss. The cover story, “Sound Science,” starts with a striking comparison of photos of mouse cochlea – one with healthy hair cells and the other with damaged hair cells, representing hearing loss.
The article points out that before now, there were few efforts by the pharmaceutical industry to treat hearing loss, likely because the ear is so complex: Hearing requires both a working inner ear and proper processing by the brain.
“If we look at the ear today, the only approved products are antibiotic eardrops,” David Weber, chief executive officer of the San Diego-based biotech firm Otonomy, told the magazine.
However, efforts are growing for various reasons, including the current lack of treatment, a small pool of hearing specialists who are pushing for advancements and the prevalence of patients with hearing loss, especially as the baby boomer generation ages.
“The thing about hearing is it is actually pretty much white space,” Barbara Domayne-Hayman, chief business officer of Autifony Therapeutics, a biotech firm developing hearing loss treatment, told the magazine. “There are no precedents, no templates. We’re figuring out how to do it as we go along.”
The efforts range from military initiatives focused on noise-induced hearing loss suffered by service women and men to vaccine-like pharmaceuticals that can potentially prevent damage in the first place. Here is a sampling of some of the exciting initiatives outlined in Chemical and Engineering News:
Tinnitus treatment
The company Otonomy has envisioned a new way to make tinnitus treatment effective via a modified delivery method. While tinnitus is a fickle symptom, one method that doctors have used for severe tinnitus is to inject steroids into the middle ear. However, this process is difficult and drawn out, which makes its effectiveness elusive. Otonomy is seeking to change the game by suspending the steroid in a polymer that changes to a gel inside the ear and slowly dissolves over the course of a week, creating a better method for getting the steroid to the inner ear.
Hair cell growth
Hair cells are very limited – we’re born with a certain number and they don’t regenerate. If hair cells are damaged, hearing is damaged. A few companies are working on discovering drugs that can stimulate hair cell growth, including Edge and Audion Therapeutics.
Gene therapy
Similarly, other companies are working on gene therapy, including a partnership between GenVec and major drug company Novartis. The goal is to advance the field of genomics related to hearing loss by understanding how an explosion or loud noise changes the cochlea at its molecular level. This can help them find which genes make you more resilient against or prone to hearing loss.
Preventing hearing loss
Sound Pharmaceuticals is a company looking to prevent hearing loss in the first place. It’s currently working on mimicking the body’s natural cellular defense mechanism through a previously developed compound called ebselen. The goal is to protect against NIHL and drug-induced damage to the ears. The study has already had apparent success with a pill that is taken twice per day.
Another initiative from Sound Pharmaceuticals and other biopharmaceutical and biotech companies are working on is developing a similar proactive treatment to prevent hearing loss from chemotherapy, which is ototoxic, or damaging to the hearing.
