Creighton professor strives to reverse hearing loss

Here's a recent article that came out last week about a Creighton University professor working on a cure for hearing loss.

It’s a bit of a stretch to describe Kirk Beisel’s research as something akin to seeking “Rogaine for the inner ear.”

But if his work with gene therapy pays off, the Creighton University professor and his team may aid untold numbers of people suffering from hearing loss by restoring the tiny sensory cells, the “hair cells”, inside their ears.

Or, he says, by preventing these hair cells from dying in the first place and thereby slowing down what is the leading cause of deafness in humans.

“The commercial potential is huge because by the time most people reach their 60s, nearly a third of them have hearing loss because these hair cells have died,” says Beisel, whose lab is in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Creighton.

“When they reach their mid-70s, half have some kind of deafness,” he adds. Beisel is working closely with Lee Fenicle, director of Intellectual Resources Management, who has applied for several patents relating to Beisel’s research.

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