A research paper titled "AAV-Mediated Gene Therapy Restores Hearing in Patients with DFNB9 Deafness" was published in Advanced Science by Suzhou Otovia Therapeutics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Otovia) and its cooperating organizations in the recent past, marking the first successful application of gene therapy to patients with hereditary deafness in the world, bringing new expectation to millions of patients with this disease.

Gene therapy has been a research hotspot in the medical field for the past few years, and many research institutes around the world have made attempts to apply gene therapy technologies to the treatment of hearing diseases. However, the successful application of such gene therapy in a clinical setting is reported for the first time.

The research teams and cooperating organizations of Otovia implemented a clinical trial on OTOF mutation-related deafness, a common hereditary hearing disease. In the trial, the target gene was successfully delivered into the auditory cells of patients by means of innovative gene therapy technologies, to repair the auditory function of such patients. In addition to remarkable efficacy, favorable safety was also observed in this trial. This marks a crucial step of Otovia in the research on gene therapy, and it also blazes a way in the application of gene therapy to hearing diseases.

By report, Otovia and its cooperating organizations have conducted a follow-up study (with the maximum time period till the date of publication: 6 months) on patients. They discovered that most patients had an obvious restoration in hearing function two weeks after administration and recovered close to the normal level one month after administration.

Link to the paper：https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202306788