{"id":217219,"date":"2025-07-04T21:04:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T02:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/gene-therapy-can-restore-hearing-in-adults-first-of-its-kind-trial-shows"},"modified":"2025-07-04T21:04:36","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T02:04:36","slug":"gene-therapy-can-restore-hearing-in-adults-first-of-its-kind-trial-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/gene-therapy-can-restore-hearing-in-adults-first-of-its-kind-trial-shows","title":{"rendered":"Gene Therapy Can Restore Hearing in Adults, First-of-Its-Kind Trial Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/gene-therapy-can-restore-hearing-in-adults-first-of-its-kind-trial-shows.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Up to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nidcd.nih.gov\/health\/statistics\/quick-statistics-hearing\">three in every 1,000 newborns<\/a> has hearing loss in one or both ears. While cochlear implants offer remarkable hope for these children, it requires invasive surgery. These implants also <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/23312165251317006\">cannot fully replicate<\/a> the nuance of natural hearing.<\/p>\n<p>But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41591-025-03773-w\">recent research<\/a> my colleagues and I conducted has shown that a form of gene therapy can successfully restore hearing in toddlers and young adults born with congenital deafness.<\/p>\n<p>Our research focused specifically on toddlers and young adults born with <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC7768390\/\">OTOF-related deafness<\/a>. This condition is caused by mutations in the OTOF gene that produces the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0166223612001506\">otoferlin protein<\/a> \u2013a protein critical for hearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Up to three in every 1,000 newborns has hearing loss in one or both ears. While cochlear implants offer remarkable hope for these children, it requires invasive surgery. These implants also cannot fully replicate the nuance of natural hearing. But recent research my colleagues and I conducted has shown that a form of gene therapy [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}