Health & Wellbeing

Regrowing hair cells to reverse hearing loss sounds good to us

Regrowing hair cells to reverse hearing loss sounds good to us
Researchers have found a way to regrow sensory hair cells in the ear to potentially reverse hearing loss
Researchers have found a way to regrow sensory hair cells in the ear to potentially reverse hearing loss
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Researchers have found a way to regrow sensory hair cells in the ear to potentially reverse hearing loss
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Researchers have found a way to regrow sensory hair cells in the ear to potentially reverse hearing loss

While many of us wish we could regrow hair lost as we age, there are other hairs we might forget about – namely, the tiny ones in our ears that help us hear. Once we lose the sensory hair cells in the cochlea, they're gone for good, but now researchers have found a way to regrow them in mice, potentially paving the way for more effective hearing loss treatments in humans.

We start life with about 15,000 of those hair cells in each ear, but over time they die off due to exposure to loud noises, disease, infection and other natural causes. To add insult to (literal) injury, mammals are the only vertebrates that can't regenerate them, so any damage done is permanent.

But can we learn to take advantage of the techniques other animals use? Past research by the team behind the new study found that a group of receptors known as epidermal growth factor (EGF) help to stimulate new sensory hair cells to grow. This signaling pathway is present in mammals, but seems to be oddly silent.

"In mice, the cochlea expresses EGF receptors throughout the animal's life, but they apparently never drive regeneration of hair cells," says Patricia White, lead author of the study. "Perhaps during mammalian evolution, there have been changes in the expression of intracellular regulators of EGF receptor family signaling. Those regulators could have altered the outcome of signaling, blocking regeneration. Our research is focused on finding a way to switch the pathway temporarily, in order to promote both regeneration of hair cells and their integration with nerve cells, both of which are critical for hearing."

The researchers focused on one particular member of the EGF family – a receptor known as ERBB2. They tested three different methods to trigger this receptor to get the EGF pathway to fire back up and help replenish the lost hair cells. In the first, a virus was used to target the receptors. In the next, the team genetically engineered mice to overexpress ERBB2 which was already activated. And finally, the third involved testing two drugs designed to stimulate stem cell activity in other parts of the body, which also activated ERBB2.

However the ERBB2 pathway was activated, the team found that doing so set off a cellular chain reaction. First cochlear support cells proliferated, which activated neighboring stem cells to turn into new sensory hair cells. These new cells also integrated with the nerve cells necessary to send sound signals to the brain.

"The process of repairing hearing is a complex problem and requires a series of cellular events," says White. "You have to regenerate sensory hair cells and these cells have to function properly and connect with the necessary network of neurons. This research demonstrates a signaling pathway that can be activated by different methods and could represent a new approach to cochlear regeneration and, ultimately, restoration of hearing."

The new research was published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Source: University of Rochester

6 comments
6 comments
Gizmowiz
Since we learn to understand speech at an early age from 1 to 4 years old it will do deaf little help in understanding speech. It's tough to teach an old dog new tricks so I would expect it would take decades for any deaf that was used as guinea pig and new hair cells grew out allowing return of some hearing. Hearing is having the ability to understand what you hear as well as just detecting the sound. Something lost among these researchers.
David Antoni
You know they have restored hearing to people with tech since many years? Even ones that have been deaf since birth. Yes there are problems with it and its not easy getting use to but this text are aimed at more than that group of hearing problems in the world.
Wolf0579
This could be a game-changer. I wish this tech could have been worked on sooner, but due to religious interference in scientific research on stem cells, it was delayed for over fifteen years for no good reason other than keeping some rich, old, white frauds happy.
I wish I could live long enough to benefit from it, but I've been almost deaf from hearing damage in the army since my twenties, almost committed suicide once or twice, (lack of ability to sleep at first and social isolation later on) and now I'm nearing the end of my life, it would be nice to be able to hear crickets and birdsong again but like all of these new treatments, they will only be available to the rich.
Grunchy
I'm curious if that sensory hair becomes grey with age like the other hair. What's funny is when you become older, your eyebrows start growing long. What if your sensory hair behaves the same way? There's no way to trim it in there. Also, what if your sensory hair becomes grey with age. What about that!
Nik
I also suffered hearing loss in the military, as well as from industrial damage afterwards. I have lost about 80% of my hearing, anything above 2 kHz, and a DB drop. It means that in anything but ideal quiet conditions, I have great difficulty understanding speech. Mostly I get along with lipreading cues to help, and 'facial language.' However if someone is not facing me when they speak, they become unintelligible, and frequently, if a subject is broached, with no previous cues, then they are also unintelligible. A fix of like this would be wonderful. Maybe I would be able to hear birdsong again, but I doubt whether it will reach the general public in the remainder of my lifetime, so just another pipe dream!
James Crow
The cure for sudden hearing loss due to all causes and for deafness by age, is a reality after 12 years of research, and science is in the clinical stage, with very good results, companies specialized in these diseases such as Frequency Therapeutics of US and Strekin AG of Switzerland, have molecules designed with amazing results, the question is no longer whether hair cells can be regenerated in humans, why studies and tests have already shown it, the question is when, because it can be before 3 years.
The results in the pre-clinical stage were so good that the FDA granted a fast track to begin clinical trials in just a year and a half, due among other causes that the procedure did not generate side effects.