Dr Marcelo Rivolta: This is the centre of stem cell biology and my name is Marcelo Rivolta. I am the Senior Research Fellow here. And the lab that I am leading is concentrated on the study of auditory stem cells, trying to develop a stem cell based therapy to treat deafness.
In the cochlear we have two critical cell types which are fundamental for the purpose of hearing and these are the hair cells and the auditory neurons. These two cells, the problem with them is that because they are only produced during the early stages of development, if they get damaged, we lose them. And therefore the person will become deaf and deafness is irreversible. So the potential of stem cell and the stem cell technologies is that if we have a population of cells now that we can induce to differentiate at will, then we will have the potential to replace these critical cell types.
What we have recently achieved is that we have identified a population of stem cells in the human cochlear that has this capacity that can produce hair cells and neurons when specific signals are given to them. And what we are doing now is using this knowledge to try to identify other population of stem cells that can be used to produce ear cells.
The next step will be to see whether these cells will work in the damaged ear and if we can use them to regenerate function. At the moment the only therapy available for deaf people or hard of hearing is the hearing aid or the cochlear implant. If we manage to replace the stem cell neurons, and more importantly the hair cells, then we are going to be in a position to offer a real biological implantation that in theory should be more natural.
RNID has been critical in identifying the potential of our research at a very early stage and supporting us all the way through. So we are in great debt to RNID. Thanks to the RNID funding we managed to for example identify this population of cochlear, human cochlear stem cells, and thanks to the continued funding we are planning to take this one step closer to a clinical reality.