A new breakthrough in lab-grown cells could restore hearing
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sensory hair cell injury accounts for 90 percent of hearing loss cases in the United States. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that about “360 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss, and 32 million of these are children.”
But what if these hair cells could be regrown? That’s the idea behind a study conducted by a team of scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Their research has long been in the making and is now published in the journal Cell Reports.
While the team works to continue improving their methods, Edge said that their lab-grown hair cells may have one immediate application — large sets of the cells can be made and used to test drugs and identify which compounds can heal damaged hair cells or induce regeneration.
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