Living Cell Technologies’ Encapsulated Choroid Plexus Cells May Be Used To Treat Hearing Loss

Wednesday 8 July 2009: Sydney, Australia, Auckland, New Zealand– Living Cell Technologies Limited (ASX: LCT; OTCQX: LVCLY) today reports that its encapsulated choroid plexus cells (NeurotrophinCell, NTCell) were shown to protect nerve cells in the inner ear from degeneration in studies done with the Bionic Ear Institute (BEI), Melbourne, Australia.

Professor Rob Shepherd, director of the institute, said, “Results have important implications for strategies to improve the treatment of hearing loss with a combination of a cochlear implant and NTCell”.

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Duke University audiologist Molly Justus looked like a recording-studio engineer as she adjusted a 16-band equalizer designed to improve the performance of Joan Ernst’s cochlear implant, a high-tech hearing device inside her ear.

Justus was aiming to make what Ernst heard through the computerized device closely resemble the nuanced notes that used to come through her trained musician’s ears. A retired teacher and choir director, Ernst is one of an estimated 36 million Americans with hearing loss, but one of only about 38,000 who have received cochlear implants.

Using cochlear implants, people like Ernst have for more than two decades been able to receive sound through the stimulation of nerves in the inner ear. In recent years, manufacturers and academics have joined to make the devices ever more sophisticated at reproducing the complexities of natural hearing.

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In the mornings, before her mother attaches the external transmitter of her cochlear implant, 3-year-old Reya Pitzo, who is deaf, is pretty quiet.

The second we attach her magnet, her vocalization goes through the roof,” said Jalena Pitzo, Reya’s mother. “She is singing, humming, and she does that all day long until we take it off at night, and then she’s quiet again.”

Reya, a bright, sunny girl with a fondness for dogs, communicates with her parents mostly through sign language. But she is learning how to hear, and how to speak. The implants that allow this to happen are new to her — she had her first about six months ago, and just had an implant in her other ear within the last month. Pitzo, 29, of Wausau, said there is already a difference in how Reya relates to the world around her.

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