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from the wonder-what-that-would-do-in-the-eyes dept.
Within the inner ear, thousands of hair cells detect sound waves and translate them into nerve signals that allow us to hear speech, music, and other everyday sounds. Damage to these cells is one of the leading causes of hearing loss, which affects 48 million Americans.
Each of us is born with about 15,000 hair cells per ear, and once damaged, these cells cannot regrow. However, researchers at MIT, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts Eye and Ear have now discovered a combination of drugs that expands the population of progenitor cells (also called supporting cells) in the ear and induces them to become hair cells, offering a potential new way to treat hearing loss.
"Hearing loss is a real problem as people get older. It's very much of an unmet need, and this is an entirely new approach," says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and one of the senior authors of the study.
[...] Because this treatment involves a simple drug exposure, the researchers believe it could be easy to administer it to human patients. They envision that the drugs could be injected into the middle ear, from which they would diffuse across a membrane into the inner ear. This type of injection is commonly performed to treat ear infections.
Will J. McLean et al. Clonal Expansion of Lgr5-Positive Cells from Mammalian Cochlea and High-Purity Generation of Sensory Hair Cells. Cell Reports, February 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2017.01.066
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 22 2017, @09:47PM
Not one, not two, but three hard sci fi plots for you to think about today, all of which are halfway interesting.
1) Parents who blow $$$$ on their kids learning to play some instrument solely to get into college will blow $$$$ to get injections to make their kids hearing better so theoretically they'll play better. Of course this doesn't help with lack of finger dexterity or stupidity but some kids will get hearing modified to better than stock. Maybe some military folks too, snipers and scouts.
2) Companies and the military will forget about ear pro because some accidents can be prevented by hearing stuff and you can just get injections when you quit / retire. Of course if you're fired you're deaf until you fund yourself. Or maybe not. And cheap companies will only give a 50% shot so you'll never hear right. Also some sound levels physically hurt but since deafness won't matter you'll have people quite literally being tortured in loud working environments because "who cares you can fix that with a cheap ear shot".
3) Nothing says human in 2010s quite like if hair grows there we feel the need to shave it or wax it off, and if it doesn't grow there no more like on top of your head or in your ear they spend $$$ to get it to grow. How 2010s. Shockingly body mod hair growth has not caught on although you'd think furries and Chewbacca fans would totally be covered in hair right now. Someday, the freaky world of fashion being what it is, we're gonna have way too trendy hipsters walking around looking like chewbacca. There will be all kinds of fascinating effects. For example if someone looks like a shaggy rug, will nudity be allowed if theres so much hair you can't see the fun parts? How bout satyr type look, like if everything from belt down on me right now was covered with six inches of hair could I run around naked (implying I don't already look like a satyr, etc) Would an islamic woman covered in 4 inches of hair be required to wear the islamic clothing if they essentially have a permanently attached bear rug such that no skin can be seen? Chewie in star wars was vaguely brown but will we see "nude" purple furries and rainbow furries? How could we not? With the hair growth products we have, why haven't we seen this already?
A side issue for #3 is how about alpine mountain climbers, heres a way to make it physically impossible to die of hypothermia or frostbite via a pill and some hair growth (well, aside from getting dunked in water, but presumably some kind of scotch guard fabric spray silicone could dry my chewbacca body hair in seconds after I get out of water).
Oh and a gross #3 issue, who gets to shave or wax chewbaccas back when looking like chewie isn't cool anymore (implying its ever possible for chewie not to be cool, of course)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 23 2017, @02:07AM
Daaam'!!! I'm hearing left quite well, why can't the company pay half the price for me to hear right as well?
Chemotherapies will do it for you in as short as 2 weeks.
Also, they say setting a Chewbacca on fire will not only get rid of the fur, but will also keep him warm for the rest of his life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 23 2017, @04:11AM
Somehow, I doubt that stimulated hair growth will provide any improved hearing for normal (evolved for millions of years) people. It is a miraculous cure for people who have lost their hearing after hair loss, but even they probably don't return to hearing as good as "normal." Kind of like the blind people who are getting "neurostim vision" - definitely better than no sight at all, but hardly 20-20.
Still, won't stop Hollywood hacks from writing the screenplays.
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