Prof Matthew Holley: My name is Matthew Holley – I'm the Professor of Sensory Physiology at the University of Sheffield and Head of the Department of Bio-medical Science. I am also a Trustee for RNID.
I have a very strong interest in uniting the power of research with the community that best needs to develop it from. We have covered a wide range of hearing research here in Sheffield and now we have several RNID-funded projects in a very wide range of subjects.
If you look back at what the most exciting developments have been in hearing research over the last five years, one of them is the derivation of human stem cells from the inner ear. This provides us with enormous potential to learn more about how the human ear develops.
We also have a very strong research crew looking at the cellular physiology. This is the function of hair cells of the sensory cells that convert sound into electrical signals inside the inner ear.
So we do have some very exciting research here in Sheffield and we can collaborate between us to produce a strong unit that will address the problems of curing deafness in the future.
Having said that, of course, we are not the only hearing research group in the world and there is an awful lot of exciting research supported by RNID, not just in the UK but worldwide.
In addition to that RNID has a very collaborative approach to the pharmaceutical industry. It has a very, very good insight into the needs of the community with hearing loss and it has a good link to many pharmaceutical companies which allows it to show the industrial sector exactly what problems need to be solved and which sorts of people are likely to be able to collaborate with them effectively.
It can put up joint funding schemes which are backed by companies who will have a very direct interest in taking an idea to the market and solving real problems for people with hearing loss. And taking those problems to the clinic through a really important step which we have to get to, which is the application of the research to the benefit of patients. This will obviously be derived from the worldwide effort in hearing research and it will benefit all people in the world.
So I think that RNID has a truly imaginative and global perspective on hearing loss and it will undoubtedly deliver significant achievements in the next five or 10 years.