By Megan Beers Wood, Ph.D.
I was interested in science from a very young age and wanted to be a doctor. My first “research” project was in 5th grade when I looked into how superglue could be used instead of stitches in some wounds.
Luckily I come from a family with several scientists. On one side was my grandfather, who was a forester with a Ph.D. in plant biology, and on the other side I have two cousins who are scientists—one a chemist working for the Smithsonian Institution and the other a scientist working in biotech. We’re all a curious bunch, and that was encouraged at home through nature walks with my parents and science kits to play with.
As a toddler I was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. My experiences even as a young patient in teaching hospitals inspired me and furthered my interest in science. One of my pediatric rheumatologists oversaw my independent research study in high school, which was my first real introduction to scientific literature.
My goal as a researcher has always been to explain rare phenomena. Right now my focus is studying pathologies following noise overexposure. This includes noise-induced hearing loss and pain hyperacusis, where patients experience physical pain from everyday noises at typical sound intensities. I specifically look at how the immune system interacts with the neurons of the ear after noise.
My doctorate from Emory University in Atlanta was in immunology and molecular pathogenesis, or the study of disease at a molecular level. I followed that up with postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins in the department of otolaryngology.
That’s when something fascinating caught my attention—I discovered that neurons in the cochlea expressed genes in common with pain-sensing neurons.
This piqued my interest. With my background in immunology, I wanted to see whether the alpha-calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP-alpha) in those neurons interacts with immune cells after noise exposure, as it does in other organs. CGRPa is essentially a chemical messenger in the body.
When I looked for CGRPa protein in type II peripheral endings after noise exposure, I saw promising results. This observation led me to apply for the Emerging Research Grant from Hearing Health Foundation, which was generously funded by Hyperacusis Research. This grant became a turning point in my career.
CGRPa is particularly interesting for several reasons: It is found in pain-sensing neurons throughout the body; it plays a role in inflammation and pain signaling; and it can affect how immune cells behave and respond. CGRPa is like a molecular “alarm system,” getting released by certain neurons when tissue is damaged or stressed (like from excessive noise exposure). And it can trigger responses from nearby cells, including immune cells.
My discovery that cochlear neurons express CGRPa similar to pain-sensing neurons elsewhere in the body provides an important clue about how noise exposure might trigger pain-like responses in the ear. This connection between the hearing system and pain system could help explain conditions like hyperacusis.
The ERG grant allowed me to develop a new technique that will become one of the foundations for my independent lab. I had wanted to pursue more questions about the immune system and pain hyperacusis, but these questions were outside the scope of my lab’s existing funding. The grant gave me the resources to follow these lines of inquiry.
The pain hyperacusis field did not have an assay for affective pain caused by sound, or a way to track sound-induced pain in an animal model. So a major breakthrough during my second year of ERG funding was developing a “grimace assay” to study sound-evoked pain with the goal of eventually developing an animal model of pain hyperacusis.
Facial grimaces are a conserved response to pain; humans and animals wince when in pain. This technique measures different parts of the face to show how much the animal is grimacing in response to sound. We have made terrific progress and will be publishing our first results this year.
The ERG funding also helps support undergraduate research assistants. I am passionate about providing research experience to undergraduates, but they need financial support to work over the summer. This was built into my grant and helped provide research experience for three undergraduates.
With Team Grimace: Ben Seicol, Ph.D., and Amelie Valles, an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins who was named an ARO Scholar this year.
One of these undergraduates, Viola Monovich, has gone on to a Ph.D. program at Boston University, and Anna Kohler took a position in biotech. The third, Amelie Valles, is an undergraduate at Hopkins who was named an ARO Scholar this year, presenting a poster at the ARO (Association for Research in Otolaryngology) MidWinter Meeting in February.
The grimace assay developed from the ERG grant led to another award: the Blaustein Endowment for Pain Research Grant at Johns Hopkins. With the results from these two grants, I plan to apply for funding from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
These independent projects formed the basis of my proposals for my being able to start my own lab. I’m proud to say that I am now overseeing my lab at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine as an assistant professor in the department of hearing and speech sciences as of this January.
After my ERG grant funding concluded, Hyperacusis Research asked me to join their scientific advisory board. I had previously met with their patient advocates, and it was very rewarding to be able to interact with people experiencing the condition. As I had just started researching the condition in earnest, meeting with patients really helped me understand the mechanisms underlying hyperacusis, and the differences between loudness and pain hyperacusis.
When I’m not in the lab, my husband, who is a pastor, and I are kept very busy by our two young sons. I also enjoy gardening, and one summer our community garden grew 70 pounds of cucumbers and 15 varieties of tomatoes. I like to think I’m following in my grandfather’s footsteps as he grew abundant vegetables. I also enjoy embroidery. I find free-handing shapes lets me slow down. It keeps my hands busy while I think over complex problems.
Growing up around music, the experiential side of hearing has always been important to me. My grandmother wore hearing aids, and I saw firsthand how uncomfortable they can be and how isolated she became when the batteries got low. These personal connections continue to drive my research forward.
Megan Beers Wood, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the department of hearing and speech sciences at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where she oversees her HARMONIC Laboratory (Hearing Response Mechanisms Through Observations of Neuro-Immunity in the Cochlea). She is a 2022–2023 Emerging Research Grants (ERG) scientist generously funded by Hyperacusis Research, where she is now a member of their scientific advisory board. HHF is grateful for our long partnership with Hyperacusis Research, founded by the late Bryan Pollard, through which we fund ERG grants in the area of hyperacusis. For more, see hhf.org/hyperacusis-research.
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My focus is studying pathologies following noise overexposure. This includes noise-induced hearing loss and pain hyperacusis. I specifically look at how the immune system interacts with the neurons of the ear after noise.