Hearing is a crucial sense that allows us to communicate with each other and engage with the world around us, enhancing our daily lives. Beyond social interactions, hearing also plays a key role in alerting us to the environment around us, keeping us safe in harmful situations. Loss of hearing can have a massive impact on a person’s life, making it challenging to communicate with others. This can lead to social isolation and overall cognitive decline. With advancements in medicine, there is hope for restoring hearing through new treatments, especially with researchers gaining new insights into the molecular mechanisms behind hearing loss.
Dr. Wei-Ming Yu’s presentation on his new research centered around the roles of hepsin and TMPRSS1 in hearing loss elucidates some of these mechanisms. This study observed increased hearing thresholds and tectorial membrane malformations in hepsin KO mice1. Mice with higher hepsin expressions exhibited improved hearing function and tectorial membrane morphology. Hepsin expression was also shown to be correlated with alpha and beta tectorin expression, which is important for temporal membrane development. These findings provide critical insights into the mechanisms of hearing loss and underscore the importance of hepsin/TMPRSS1 in maintaining proper auditory function.
A recent study on gene therapy targets age-related hearing loss by using adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) to deliver healthy TMPRSS3 genes in rodents. This has been shown to facilitate improvements in hearing for months after delivery, suggesting potential for human treatments.2 The findings from Dr. Yu’s work with hepsins could open up further avenues for new interventions regarding age-related hearing loss, as treatment with exogenous hepsins or TMPRSS1 could enhance the effects seen in the aforementioned study. This is especially a possibility as other studies have observed changes in the physical structure of the tectorial membrane throughout the aging process.3
Further exploration into these therapies could yield significant benefits for individuals who are affected by age-related hearing loss. As it stands now, significant work still has to be done before these therapies can be implemented in humans, but research conducted by Dr. Yu and other groups into the mechanisms underlying hearing loss brings us one step closer to identifying effective solutions.
References
1. Yu, Wei-Ming. (2024). Critical role of hepsin/TMPRSS1 in hearing and tectorial membrane morphogenesis: insights from transgenic mouse models.
2. Du, W., Ergin, V., Loeb, C., Huang, M., Silver, S., Armstrong, A. M., Huang, Z., Gurumurthy, C. B., Staecker, H., Liu, X., & Chen, Z. (2023). Rescue of auditory function by a single administration of AAV-TMPRSS3 gene therapy in aged mice of human recessive deafness DFNB8. Molecular Therapy, 31(9), 2796-2810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymthe.2023.05.005
3. Mansour, A., Sellon, J. B., Filizzola, D., Ghaffari, R., Cheatham, M. A., & Freeman, D. M. (2021). Age-related degradation of tectorial membrane dynamics with loss of CEACAM16. Biophysical Journal, 120(21), 4777-4785. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2021.09.029
Thompson, Bronwyn. “Hope for Age-Related Hearing Loss with Novel Gene Therapy.” New Atlas, 29 May 2023, newatlas.com/medical/age-related-hearing-loss-novel-gene-therapy.
No comments:
Post a Comment