Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Gene Therapy, A New Door for Neurological Conditions


Hearing loss is the third most common health problem in the United States with increasing rate. To the date, there are at least 36 million Americans reported lost hearing according to WebMD.
Patients who suffer from hearing loss usually wear a hearing aid or have cochlear implant. Hearing aids amplify sounds so that damaged ears can detect them. Comparing to hearing aids, cochlear implant is very different and much more powerful. A cochlear implant is a complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to patients who are profoundly deaf. It consists of an external portion and an internal portion. The external part is where a microphone and a speech processor are located right above the ear. The microphone can pick up sound and send to the speech process, which selects and arranges the sounds. Signals of the sounds then were passed to the stimulator of the internal part and were converted into electric impulses. Another part of the internal part, electrode array, collects the impulses from stimulator to its position in the cochlear and sends the impulses to the auditory nerve.

 According to ScienceDaily, researchers at University of New South Wales, Australia have successfully regrew auditory nerves by delivering electrical pulses from a cochlear implant to deliver gene therapy. The principle behind this method is using electrical pulses delivered from the cochlear implant to deliver the DNA to the cells close to the array of implanted electrodes. And then these cells produce neurotrophins. After a couple months the neurotrophins were generated, the hearing nerve maybe maintained by ongoing neural activity made by the cochlear implant.


This result is an important breakthrough of gene therapy for possible treating different kinds of neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and other psychiatric conditions. With advanced technology nowadays, it seems that we are able to cure devastating disorders in the soon future.

Posted by Yim Hui (B)

6 comments:

  1. This was an interesting post, I'm just uncertain about one thing. How did the electrical impulses deliver DNA, and what was the origin of said DNA?

    Posted by Tim Daly

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    1. Thank you Tim. So during the surgery of cochlear implant, the surgeon who is installing the device would inject the DNA solution into the cochlea. Then the device would fire electrical impulses to trigger the DNA transfer once the implant is inserted. And the origin of the DNA solution is lab-made, in which the gene sequence was built based on normal auditory nerve gene sequence.

      Posted by Yim Hui

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  2. In the brain, it is commonly known that nerves that are used repetitively are strengthened, making you better at the things you practice. However, this new development of shocking nerves to make them regrow is totally new. It makes sense that a nerve would adapt when constantly stimulates, but actually using this principle in therapy is amazing.
    -JE

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    1. Absolutely! And we are aiming for more advanced technology for building these kind of electronic devices to inject DNA solutions into test subjects, such as lab mice for DNA repair process.

      Posted by Yim Hui

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  3. this is very interesting to read about! Do you know if this is still in the experimental stages or if they plan on using them for patients in the near future?
    Posted by Kristen Whitehead

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  4. This is almost a breakthrough in science because scientists can now link parts of the brain to technology for full function. Do you think it is possible that they could apply this to other areas such as prosthetics?

    -Nicole B

    ReplyDelete