In 1958 Collette Ramsey Baker founded a nonprofit she named the Deafness Research Foundation to fund the most promising scientific investigations in the auditory field. It was an act of gratitude, to pay it forward after receiving what was then a novel surgery to treat her otosclerosis and restore her hearing.
This year, 65 years later, the nonprofit she created, now known as Hearing Health Foundation (HHF), proudly continues to support life-changing hearing and balance research, as part of our mission to prevent, research, and find better treatments and cures for hearing and balance conditions.
Since 1958 we have awarded 2,026 grants spanning both our flagship Emerging Research Grants (ERG) program as well as the Hearing Restoration Project (HRP), totaling over $39.5 million. Significantly, for the 2021 grant year, HHF boosted the impact of ERG funding—thanks to our supporters—increasing the amount of the program’s grants to $50,000 per year and making them renewable for a second year, for a total of $100,000 per project.
More funding and more time leads to more ambitious experimental plans, additional data collected, and a stronger footing for subsequent research and research funding. ERG alumni have gone on to be awarded an average $56 in additional federal funding for every dollar of investment through ERG (2002–present).
We summarized major findings and milestones during our 60th anniversary, so here we provide an update of the past five years, starting with the gEAR (gene Expression Analysis Resource). Supported with initial funds by the HRP since its inception, the data analysis and visualization portal received federal funding from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) in 2021, validating and recognizing the role the gEAR plays across the entire ear field. The underlying architecture is also being used by scientists in other fields, notably neuroscience.
Discoveries Using the gEAR
Charting a developmental map of the mouse inner ear, research published in June 2020
Understanding noise-induced hearing loss through gene expression changes, research published in September 2021
Creating a multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex, research published in October 2021
Notable Research Findings
Novel findings about chick hair cell regeneration in March 2021 and pinpointing barriers to hair cell regeneration in the adult mouse cochlea in November 2022
Unlocking a paradigm shift in reducing ototoxicity from a common chemotherapy drug using the magnolia extract honokiol, which received NIDCD funding in February 2022
Additional NIH funding to better understand hidden hearing loss in August 2022, which HHF board member and ERG scientist Sharon Kujawa, Ph.D., first helped describe in 2009, and which she presented on during our April 2022 research webinar
More Milestones
We kicked off our Keep Listening hearing loss prevention campaign in June 2020, aiming to create a culture shift in how we think about our hearing and hearing health primarily through TV public service announcements and social media support, such as from Jay Weinberg from Slipknot here and here.
We launched our hourlong quarterly research webinars in October 2020, featuring notable ERG scientists presenting their work, and the webinars are available as captioned recordings on our webinar page.
Lisa Goodrich, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School became the HRP’s scientific director in January 2021, and the consortium was organized into three working groups to reinvigorate the group’s collaborative spirit and propel the consortium’s work forward in new, creative ways
We are looking forward to celebrating our 70th with even more achievements. Thank you to all our supporters. We could not do this without you. —Yishane Lee and Christopher Geissler, Ph.D.
Sources (click to view): Pop Culture Madness, The People History, and The New York Times
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Our results suggest that mature cochlear supporting cells can be reprogrammed into sensory hair cells, providing a possible target for hair cell regeneration in mammals.