Saaid Safieddine, Christine Petit and Crystel Bonnet, researchers at the Hearing Institute, an Institut Pasteur Center, have established the full picture of therapeutic avenues for certain types of hearing impairments. They focused on so-called sensorineural deficiencies, caused by an anomaly in the inner ear or auditory nerve. Over the past 10 years, preclinical gene therapy studies have shown promising results. This research, aimed at restoring hearing, will persevere and expedite its progress to provide curative treatment to patient patients in the near future with the new Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) supported by the Hearing Institute and hosted by the Institut Pasteur.
This article was the subject of a news on the Institut Pasteur website.
Petit, C., Bonnet, C., & Safieddine, S. (2023). Deafness : From genetic architecture to gene therapy. Nature Reviews Genetics, 1‑22.
Illustration: Auditory sensory cells of the inner ear, seen by scanning electron microscopy. Credit: Institut Pasteur/Unité génétique et physiologie de l'audition - colorization Jean-Marc Panaud