Oligonucleotide Protection and Treatment of Hearing Loss

Patent no.: 9,457,009 and 10,124,062

Inventor(s): O’neil Guthrie

Description: Currently, there are no widely acceptable medications to prevent hearing loss or increase the capacity of the ear to recover from injury. This technology employs a tandem sequence of oligonucleotides (called t-oligo) with homology to mammalian telomere chromosome sequence to prevent hearing loss from noise injury. The basis for this auditory protection is related to protective DNA repair enzymes that respond in the presence of t-oligo. T-oligo are strings of DNA with the sequence TTAGGG and known to increase DNA repair capacity that protects cells from injury by increasing their capacity to repair themselves. However, this oligonucleotide has not been used to protect hearing, and this invention provides a novel use of t-oligo to preserve hearing following noise injury.

Potential applications: Hearing loss and protection against noise trauma.

Benefits and advantages: This technology focuses on DNA repair associated with regeneration of cochlear function after injury and suggests that inducible DNA repair enzymes exist in the mammalian cochlea and these enzymes could be therapeutically optimized.

Case no.: 2015-021

Licensing status: Licensed. Potentially interested in partnerships.