GENE therapy has partially restored hearing in deafened guinea pigs, raising hopes that the approach might work in people.
“It’s the first time anyone has biologically repaired the hearing of animals,” says Yehoash Raphael of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, head of the US-Japanese team that is developing the therapy.
Millions of people each year go deaf when the sound-detecting hair cells in the inner ear are destroyed by certain antibiotics, old age or loud noise. These cells do not normally regrow in mammals, but two years ago Raphael’s team managed to grow new hair cells in deaf…
