In what is the most recent evidence for the potential and promise of stem cell research to advance a wide range of medical treatments and cures, Stanford researchers have used stem cells to reverse damaged hearing in mice. The initial findings are so promising that the breakthrough could find its way to reversing hearing loss in humans with the benefit of an additional decade of research and trials.
As The Telegraph explains, humans are born with approximately 30,000 hair cells in each of our inner ears. Through prolonged exposure to loud noise (an increasingly common condition as modernization and urbanization march forward), these hair cells can become permanently damaged, and once they are gone, they are gone for good. The inner ear hair cells are a type of tissue that we are not able to spontaneously regenerate, so those afflicted with the loss of these cells can experience permanent hearing loss and problems with balance as well.
A medical research team led by Stanford’s Stefan Heller was successful in using transplanted stem cells, programming them to grow into new hair cells in laboratory mice, according to The Telegraph. The new cells were determined to perform the required function of translating physical impulses into electrical impulses that is necessary to capturing sound in the ear and sending that information on to the brain.
Photo by Shizhao via Wikimedia Commons.