America: Gene therapy cures deafness in a mouse

2015-09-03 2015-09-03T07:45:39Z

ArabiaWeather.com – In search of a radical treatment for deafness, a genetic treatment for deafness came to light in a laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital, which research director Jeff Holt said opens the door to treating every child who loses hearing due to a genetic defect if everything goes as it should. It is planned.

Holt added that his fellow researchers are tackling this problem upstream, using genetically modified viruses to repair faulty genes that make up the inner ear.

More precisely, this treatment is based on taking a viral vector and removing the viral genes so that they do not infect anyone with the disease, and replacing them with the correct DNA infiltration of the TMC1 gene.

TMC1 is of vital importance to the sense of hearing as it is responsible for decoding proteins that convert sounds into electrical signals that the brain can understand.

Holt and his team tested their treatment program on two types of deaf mice that had a mutation of the TMC1 gene similar to what happens in humans, and the team used a genetically modified virus, "AV1", to deliver the correct gene to the inner ear of two deaf mouse models.