A neuroscientist from Göttingen has created the basis for gene therapy against hearing loss. Now the treatment has been tested in humans for the first time.
Assaim Dam, 11, inherited a defective copy of a gene from his parents that provides the blueprint for a certain protein. The protein plays an important role in the transmission of sound information from the sensory cells in the inner ear to the auditory nerve - researcher Tobias Moser discovered this around twenty years ago. Anyone affected by this type of Otoferlin hearing loss hears poorly or not at all.