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Milestone Reached in Search for Deafness Cure

from New Scientist

A neurobiologist who is profoundly hard of hearing has developed an experimental gene therapy that generates the type of cells that are damaged or missing in deaf animals. Mice embryos were injected with a key developmental gene that led to the production of ear cells that convey sounds to the brain–a scientific first.

"That is sort of the major achievement or milestone that we all had to reach," says Stanford University cell biologist Stefan Heller, who specialises in hearing research and was not involved in the study.

Milestone though it may be, the advance represents only an incremental step in the search for a treatment to human hearing loss, says lead author John Brigande of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.