/ News
Implant Injects DNA Into Ear, Improves Hearing
Many people with profound hearing loss have been helped by devices called cochlear implants, but their hearing is still far from normal. They often have trouble distinguishing different musical pitches, for example, or hearing a conversation in a noisy room. Now, researchers have found a clever way of using cochlear implants to deliver new genes into the ear—a therapy that, in guinea pigs, dramatically improves hearing.
The most common cause of deafness is loss of the tiny hair cells within the cochlea, a hollow, spiral structure in the inner ear that translates sounds into nerve impulses. Hearing aids that merely amplify sounds don't help people who have lost these hair cells. So since the 1970s, more than 320,000 children and adults around the world who are deaf or severely hard of hearing have received cochlear implants. Instead of relying on hair cells, the device converts sounds into electrical impulses, then uses electrodes to relay these signals to the auditory nerve leading to the brain. But because the auditory nerve lies buried within tissue, the implants don't work as well as they could if the electrodes were closer to the nerve.
Some researchers have spurred new neurons to grow inside the cochlea using a protein called a growth factor. They have pumped the growth factor into the inner ear, or used a virus to deliver a gene that codes for it into cells. But pumped-in growth factor doesn't work for long unless it is replenished. And viral gene therapy doesn’t always put the gene in the right cells and carries risks, such as a reaction from the immune system to the virus.
Graduate student Jeremy Pinyon and colleagues in the laboratory of neuroscientist Gary Housley at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, tested a different kind of gene therapy on guinea pigs made deaf with a drug that kills cochlear hair cells. The researchers created loops of DNA encoding a gene for a growth factor called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). While inserting a cochlear implant into the animals, the team injected the cochlea with a solution of BDNF DNA, then used electrical pulses from the device to create pores in the cells lining the cochlea and coax the DNA to enter the cells. The loops also included a gene for green fluorescent protein so that the scientists could see if the inserted DNA was taken up by the cells and translated into protein.
In the next few days, the cells began pumping out BDNF, which, in turn, spurred the growth of long, spiky neurons toward the electrodes. Two weeks after the treatment, the researchers tested how sensitive the animals’ brains were to sounds of various frequencies. The results were closer to those for normal animals and much better than those seen in animals that had only a cochlear implant.
“We’ve closed the neural gap,” Housley says. Although it's hard to precisely measure sound perception in guinea pigs, if applied in humans, "we're hoping that tonal colors and richness will be improved,” says Housley, whose team’s report appears today in Science Translational Medicine.
One caveat is that the improved hearing didn't last long—the cells stopped producing BDNF after about 6 weeks and the new nerves began to die. The DNA loops will have to be modified to work longer in cells, Housley says. Another potential problem is that it’s not known how long the cells that received the DNA last before they die and their BDNF-making ability is lost. Housley thinks these issues can be addressed, however, and he hopes to start a small clinical trial to test the procedure in people within 2 years.
"The idea [of using BDNF] has been around. But this is the first study to put this idea together with cochlear implants," says neuroscientist Jeffrey Holt of Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The technique is “ingenious,” says hearing researcher Yehoash Raphael of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, whose group has used a virus to insert the gene for BNDF into cochlear cells. Housley hopes other implanted devices could also deliver gene therapy, such as small electrical devices sometimes inserted into the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease to relieve their symptoms.
Source: http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/04/implant-injects-dna-ear-improves-hearing
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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