Sunday, May 08, 2022

This comes under Insty's "Faster, please!"

Frequency Therapeutics, a biotechnology company, is working to repair hearing loss using a novel kind of regenerative treatment rather than hearing aids or implants. The company programs progenitor cells, a descendent of stem cells in the inner ear, to make the tiny hair cells that enable humans to hear, using small molecules.

When exposed to loud sounds or medicines, such as certain chemotherapies and antibiotics, hair cells die. The medication candidate developed by Frequency is intended to be injected into the ear to rebuild these cells inside the cochlea. The organization has already enhanced people’s hearing in clinical trials, as judged by speech perception tests – the capacity to interpret and distinguish words.

My first thought is that if it passes the next round of tests, I'll volunteer as a test subject.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ditto on being a volunteer. I've had ringing in my ears since a boiler explosion in 1984. I don't have much to lose in being a guinea pig for them.