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A step closer in the fight against age-related hearing loss
A bridging grant from national charity Deafness Research UK is helping to ensure that some of the leading lights in deafness research are able to continue their ground breaking work into age-related hearing loss while awaiting the start of their next funding award.
Project leaders Dr Sally Dawson and Dr Jonathan Gale, both UCL Ear Institute Researchers have been awarded a new three year grant from the Wellcome Trust following a successful 18 month project originally funded by Deafness Research UK. The charity also provided a vital bridging grant for Dr Emily Towers, a key member of their team - to ensure Dr Towers could keep working on the project in the laboratory prior to the start of new funding from the Wellcome Trust.
The research will continue to study the role the gene caprin-1 plays in the response of inner ear (cochlear) hair cells to stress. The original Deafness Research UK grant included enabling Dr Towers to visit a laboratory in the USA to learn a technique to deliver the caprin-1 gene into hair cells in a dish using viral technology.
Only a few laboratories in the world have been able to generate and use viruses in this way in the inner ear, but now Dr Towers has been able to successfully transfer the technique to the UCL Ear Institute laboratory in London and pass on the knowledge to staff - all thanks to the charity's funding.
Rachel Macdonald, Research Development Manager at Deafness Research UK said: "A key part of our work is in ensuring that the most important hearing research continues and is not allowed to fail for want of funding. This new research is some of the most promising to have come along in recent years and we are committed to ensuring well-trained researchers are kept within the profession""Without Deafness Research UK's support for Emily over the last year, we would have lost her expertise and quite possibly, she would have had to leave hearing research for another position," commented Dr Sally Dawson. "This type of bridging funding is invaluable for retaining good staff between grants and we would like to thank the charity and all of its supporters."
Dr Dawson and Dr Gale's project aims to bring protection from age-related hearing loss a step closer. People lose their hearing as they get older because the sensory hair cells that are responsible for detecting sound die and are not replaced. One of the reasons sensory cells are thought to die is because of the damage accumulated by a lifetime of exposure to environmental stressors, such as noise and toxins. Some people seem able to keep their hair cells and hearing into very old age, so mechanisms for preventing damage must exist. Currently little is known about these protective mechanisms - something this cutting edge research is looking to change.
During the period funded by Deafness Research UK, the research team investigated the role of a gene called caprin-1 that they previously identified may be involved in the response of hair cells to severe stress. The Wellcome Trust funding will now allow the team to test whether or not this is the case. Identifying the molecular mechanisms involved in protecting cells during hearing damage will contribute to work aimed at boosting such mechanisms in people who are beginning to lose their hearing.
Dr Towers said: "To better understand the function of different genes involved in hair cell survival, it is critical to be able to alter gene expression in cell models. This has proved very difficult to do in hair cells and viral delivery is one of the few ways that has resulted in good levels of success."
Under the Wellcome project, the team will use the viral technique introduced by Dr Towers to manipulate the amount of this gene that is present in the hair cells to see if they become better able to survive the damage that can kill cells. Success in the project could transform a cure for age-related hearing loss from a dream into future reality.
