Hearing loss charity, RNID, is travelling to Chicago to launch a special issue of Drug Discovery Today at BIO International, the world’s largest biotechnology conference. RNID will be exhibiting at booth number 4707 Produced in association with RNID and Fight for Sight, the publication highlights the exciting progress being made in developing treatments for hearing and vision loss.
RNID’s Head of Biomedical Research, Dr Ralph Holme and Business Development Executive, Dr Denise Goldman are aiming to raise awareness of the commercial opportunities that exist in developing medical treatments for hearing loss and tinnitus.
During the conference, RNID will meet with companies interested in developing new drugs and therapies for hearing loss and tinnitus to help them understand the market and how their technology could be applied to helping prevent and treat hearing loss.
Dr Ralph Holme, RNID’s Head of Biomedical Research said, ‘advances in our understanding of the biology of hearing loss means that there are now real opportunities for translating promising research into therapeutics to prevent and treat hearing loss. The number of people aged over 65 years old is set to increase by 60% by 2027 creating an enormous demand for medicines that reduce the burden of age-related conditions like hearing loss. With such a vast and untapped market coupled with major scientific advances, there has never been a better time for the pharmaceutical industry to invest in hearing loss.’
Steve Carney, Editor of Drug Discovery Today, comments ‘I think we are all familiar with drug discovery developments in life threatening diseases; after all, these are the ones that normally make the headlines. A refocus on areas that are perhaps not life-threatening, but have a huge impact on the quality of life, such as hearing and vision loss, are likely to become significant markets in the near future. Some of the researched reviewed in the special issue of Drug Discovery Today on age-related sensory impairment [Drug Discovery Today (2010) 15(7/8)] shows what remarkable advances have been made in the last few years and how close we may be to developing therapeutics that could be effective in the treatment of auditory and visual impairment.’
The articles on hearing impairment featured in this special issue are available as free downloads on this website:
Drug screening for hearing loss: Using the zebrafish lateral line to screen for drugs that prevent and cause hearing loss
By Henry C. Ou, Felipe Santos, David W. Raible, Julian A. Simon and Edwin W. Rubel
Stem cells and cell lines from the human auditory organ: applications, hurdles and bottlenecks in the development of regenerative therapies for deafness
By Marcelo N. Rivolta
Pharmacological approaches to the treatment of tinnitus
By Ana B. Elgoyhen, Berthold Langguth
Cochlear implantation: an opportunity for drug development
By Hinrich Staecker, Claude Jolly and Carolyn Garnham
• RNID will be exhibiting at booth number 4707
• BIO 2010 (http://convention.bio.org/) runs from 3-6 May 2010 and will be held in Chicago, USA. It is the world’s largest global event for the biotechnology industry.
• RNID’s market reports highlight the commercial opportunities that exist for treatments targeting ototoxicity, age-related hearing loss, tinnitus and noise-induced hearing loss, and the opportunities for a low-cost cochlear implant. For further details go to www.rnid.org.uk/marketreports
• The special Drug Discovery Today issue can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13596446
• Drug Discovery Today is a review journal, published as 12 monthly double issues, distributed in print and digital editions to over 14,000 subscribers. The journal covers the whole of the preclinical drug discovery process, from target identification and validation, through hit identification, lead identification and optimisation, though to candidate selection. The reviews are at the cutting edge of the science underpinning drug discovery, written by experts in their respective fields and cover all aspects of drug discovery from state-of-the-art genomic and proteomic approaches to target identification, through the most innovative computational approaches drug design, the science driving medicinal chemistry and the translation of these sciences to therapies.