Voice Box Breakthrough for Julie Andrews

Harvard and MIT scientists have announced an important innovation in repair to damaged vocal chords. Supported in their efforts with the participation of entertainer Julie Andrews, the researchers hope that the next phase of their study which would involve trial application in humans will begin within two years.

Andrews, best known and widely adored for the classic performances in the musical films The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins, lost her formidable, multi-octave singing voice following surgery that removed nodes from her vocal chords but which left them scarred and unable to work as before.

As reported by the The Guardian, MIT’s Robert Langer and Harvard Medical School’s Steven Zeitels have come up with a gel of polyethylene glycol whose properties of elasticity very closely match natural human tissue. The pair is increasingly confident, based on trials, that a procedure involving injection of the gel into damaged vocal chord tissue will prove capable of restoring vocal capacities.

And while helping the show to go on is great news, the innovation is holding hope for a variety of rehabilitative applications for people with vocal capacity damaged by overuse (a rigorous public speaking schedule, for example) as well as survivors of cancer localized in the throat.

Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons