MIT Develops Regenerative Drug That Beats Hearing Loss

US biotechnology firm Frequency Therapeutics is seeking to reverse hearing loss, not with hearing aids or implants, but with a new kind of regenerative therapy, Zach Winn reported for SciTechDaily.

Photo Insert: Image showing cellular regeneration, in pink, in a preclinical model of sensorineural hearing loss. The control is on the left and the right has been treated.

The company uses small molecules to program progenitor cells, a descendant of stem cells in the inner ear, to create the tiny hair cells that allow us to hear. Hair cells die off when exposed to loud noises or drugs, including certain chemotherapies and antibiotics.

Frequency’s drug is designed to be injected into the ear to regenerate these cells within the cochlea.

Progenitor cells reside in the inner ear and generate hair cells when humans are in utero, but they become dormant before birth and never again turn into more specialized cells such as the hair cells of the cochlea. Humans are born with about 15,000 hair cells in each cochlea. Such cells die over time and never regenerate.

In 2012, the research team was able to use small molecules to turn progenitor cells into thousands of hair cells in the lab. No one had ever produced such a large number of hair cells before.

He still remembers looking at the results while visiting his family, including his father, who wears a hearing aid. In clinical trials, the company has already improved people’s hearing as measured by tests of speech perception — the ability to understand speech and recognize words.

“Speech perception is the No. 1 goal for improving hearing and the No. 1 need we hear from patients,” says Frequency co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Chris Loose, who earned his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In Frequency’s first clinical study, the company saw statistically significant improvements in speech perception in some participants after a single injection, with some responses lasting nearly two years.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic