Hearing Impairment: New Frontiers of Regenerative Medicine

Sensorineural hearing loss is a very diffuse pathology in population and regenerative medicine is the most promising treatment for restoring hearing function by repairing missing or harmful gene products. There are several sectors characterized by different therapeutic solutions and methodologies such as gene therapy, genomic editing, stem cell transplantation, cell reprogramming and tissue engineering. This study summarized a literature review, by an electronic database search including PubMed and a manual search of relevant journals, for the relevant strategies utilized for restoring hearing loss, both for recessive or dominant forms, with a focus on different types of vectors that target the cochlea and approaches to overcome the anatomical barriers inherent to inner ear delivery. Based on what is reported in this review, it seems plausible to state that innovative therapeutic strategies such as gene therapy and genome editing will be used in the near future for precise DNA editing for each patient and for any disease.