Case Western Reserve University researcher gets $1.66m NIH grant

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A clinician and researcher at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has received a $1.66 million, 5-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore new ways to treat hearing loss from Usher syndrome.

Dr. Qing Yin Zheng, assistant professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Genetics at the the Cleveland, Ohio, medical school, aims to identify the mutation in mice that leads to hearing loss from Usher syndrome, and to use this information to construct a new mouse deafness model.

This model could show the way for drug therapy to treat the syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by a gene mutation that usually causes deafness and blindness in its sufferers. Deafness from Usher often can be treated with cochlear implants. However, the implants do little good if the nerve cells in the inner ear that provide the sense of hearing are not healthy.

Dr. Zheng believes these nerve cells are helped by growth factors produced by hair cells in the cochlea — the spiral-shaped cavity in the inner ear that sound into nerve impulses that are sent to the brain. So he wants to find ways to keep the hair cells from dying.

Zheng also hopes to identify key molecules and mechanisms involved in hair cell death related to hearing loss from Usher. And he hopes to prove the concept that genetic hearing loss and hair cell death can be prevented with protective therapies.

This grant is Zheng’s fourth NIH grant for research involving hearing disease, adding up to $4 million in funding.