Over time, the tiny cells inside of an organ in your inner ear get damaged or destroyed, leading to age-related hearing loss. For years, scientists have been trying to figure out a way to reverse these effects and now, they might have struck gold.
The next time you’re jamming to your favorite Taylor Swift song, you can thank thousands of tiny cells inside of an organ in your inner ear called the cochlea. These are known as hair cells—not because it’s actually hair but because they look like hairs under a microscope. They’re responsible for collecting and relaying sounds to the brain. As we age, hair cells get damaged or destroyed, leading to age-related hearing loss.
“This is a novelty that mammals have. We have the inner hair cells that when they get stimulated by sound, they communicate it to the brain,” he said. “Outer hair cells do something very unusual: They physically move. They dance in response to sound, and amplify the detection of the sound.” His team decided to play around with these genes in mice, manipulating which ones were present and functional in hair cells and seeing how this impacted a mouse’s hearing. They discovered that out of the group of potential genes, TBX2 appeared to ultimately determine whether it became an inner or an outer—so the master regulator gene could be used to replace lost or damaged hair cells of either type like a kind of switch.
“I wouldn’t say we’ve solved the problem and can now start trying [in humans],” García-Añoveros said. “You will have to see whether they restore hearing in mice and if they don’t, we have to ask why didn’t they? Is it because they aren’t properly positioned or is it because they aren’t properly connected to the brain? The good thing is that we now have the tools to study this.”
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