Matthew Kruger, Robert Boney, Alexander J. Ordoobadi’15, Thomas F. Sommers’16, Josef G. Trapani & Allison B. Coffin
March 2016. Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
Moderate to severe hearing loss affects 360 million people worldwide and most often results from damage to sensory hair cells. Aminoglycosides are effective at treating infections associated with cystic fibrosis and other life-threatening conditions such as sepsis, but cause hearing loss in 20–30% of patients.
We screened a library of 502 natural compounds in order to identify novel hair cell protectants and identified four compounds that robustly protected hair cells from aminoglycoside-induced damage.