Giving Compass' Take:

• Researchers at Fred Hutch identified a compound that may prevent chemo-induced hearing loss, a common and irreversible side effect. 

• How can philanthropy best support cancer-related health support for patients? What other side effects do cancer patients suffer? 

• Learn about addressing cancer in developing countries. 

How is a fish like an ear? Like the inner ear, some sections of the fish body sport tiny hair cells that are exquisitely tuned to miniscule physical changes in their environment. Aside from just being cool, those hair cells make certain fish — namely, zebrafish, an animal commonly used in biology studies — a research model for understanding hearing loss and how to prevent it.

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center medicinal chemist Dr. Julian Simon and his colleagues at the University of Washington used the tiny, silvery fish — many, many thousands of them — to find a drug that they think will prevent the hearing loss that often accompanies treatment with certain chemotherapies or antibiotics.

The chemotherapy cisplatin — commonly used to treat cancers such as breast, ovarian and lung cancers — and a class of strong antibiotics known as aminoglycosides can cause irreversible hearing loss in approximately 20 to 40 percent of those who take the drugs. The drugs kill the ears’ hair cells, and, like most other types of hearing loss, there’s nothing to do about it once those cells are gone.

The chemo and antibiotics also kill fish lateral line hair cells, and it’s easy to quickly check for the loss of those cells under the microscope, making these tiny animals a good starting ground for research to prevent that drug-associated hearing loss. Simon teamed up with UW zebrafish and hearing researchers Dr. David Raible and Dr. Edwin Rubel to screen different molecules that could cancel out the associated hair cell-loss.

After 10,000 tests, they found one.

That compound, which the researchers termed PROTO-1, led to the creation of a spinoff company, Oricula Therapeutics, which is developing an optimized version of the drug for clinical trial testing. Ultimately, the researchers hope to test the drug in other types of hearing loss, including age-related hearing loss, which affects nearly half of people over the age of 75.

Read the full article about preventing chemo-induced hearing loss at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.