18 million adults in the UK have hearing loss. Most of them will have developed it as an adult, most commonly as a result of ageing or exposure to loud noise. Through our research, we’re finding ways to protect people’s hearing and repair damage to the hearing system to restore hearing.
Macauley, who developed hearing loss as a side-effect of the medications he took to treat his cystic fibrosis:
Good biomedical research can help prevent side effects, so that people can get an illness treated without facing life-altering consequences. That’s why funding for biomedical research is so important – so we can get to a point where treatments work without causing additional harm.”
Our impact
What we’ve done
We’ve kick-started the development of a stem cell treatment for hearing loss. The treatment aims to restore hearing by re-growing the nerve cells that carry information about sound from the ear to the brain. When these cells die, it causes permanent hearing loss.
We have funded several research projects at the University of Sheffield, led by Professor Marcelo Rivolta, to develop this stem cell treatment. He was able to restore hearing to deafened gerbils using stem cells, showing that it is technically possible.
As a result, Professor Rivolta has secured several million pounds of additional funding from other funders and investors to develop his treatment further. He has founded a company called Rinri Therapeutics to develop and test the treatment in clinical trials – which should begin soon.
Professor Marcelo Rivolta, stem cell researcher at the University of Sheffield:
The early support provided by RNID was fundamental to this project, allowing us to take it off the ground and obtain great initial data. This was instrumental to us being able to leverage further funding from the Research Councils and other bodies, expanding our understanding of the technology and de-risking it for clinical use.”
What we’re doing now
We’re currently supporting research to prevent hearing loss caused by ‘ototoxic’ (which means ‘ear toxic’) medicines. Ototoxic medicines cause hearing loss as an unwanted side-effect, usually by damaging hair cells in the inner ear.
The most common ototoxic drugs are cisplatin, which is used to treat certain cancers, and antibiotics called aminoglycosides. These medicines save lives, but often at the cost of someone’s hearing. Finding ways to protect people’s hearing when they take these drugs would allow us to use them more widely.
We’re funding research at Stanford University in partnership with the Cystic Fibrosis Trust which aims to develop new aminoglycoside antibiotics that do not damage the sound-sensing hair cells. People with cystic fibrosis are often treated with these drugs and lose their hearing as a result. This research could lead to new highly effective antibiotics which do not cause hearing loss.
We’re also funding research at University College London to understand how cellular structures called stress granules may be damaged in the inner ear by these drugs. This research could lead to a protective treatment that targets these structures and prevents hearing loss.
What we’ll work towards in the next 25 years
Our future work will focus on developing:
- Treatments to protect people’s hearing from ototoxic medicines like cisplatin and aminoglycoside antibiotics
- treatments to prevent hearing loss caused by loud noise exposure or ageing
- treatments that can repair damage to the auditory system and restore hearing.
