Diseases and targets for local drug delivery to the inner ear

- The cochlea is a highly complex, tightly regulated sensory end-organ responsible for the conversion of environmental sound into a meaningful auditory neuronal response.
- Like all such highly ordered systems, with this complexity comes a vulnerability to many intrinsic and extrinsic phenomenon leading to temporary or permanent injury.
- As research into the fundamental processes governing hearing has advanced, so too has translational efforts to improve hearing through drug delivery to the ear.
- This review highlights diseases and cellular targets for cochlear drug delivery.
- This includes a review of the incidence and impact of sensorineural hearing loss and the various causes of SNHL, including age-related hearing loss, noise-induced hearing loss, ototoxicity, idiopathic sudden hearing loss, and autoimmune hearing loss.
- Tinnitus is also discussed as a potential target disease given its huge prevalence in the population.