Untreated hearing loss (HL) causes considerable difficulties in daily communication and can adversely affect academic performance, quality of life, and social and emotional functioning, particularly in children. For those who suffer from hearing loss caused by genetic etiologies, gene therapy (GT) might offer a more suitable solution than the conventional methods used today. This project aims to design, test, and advance the inner ear GT in a farm pig and disease model pig (Usher syndrome type 1) for clinical practice. This project develops novel methods and vectors for GT to further test and create a treatment strategy for Usher syndrome type 1 in disease model pigs to be used in clinical studies in the future. The project will be carried out in multinational collaboration with the top centers in Europe; Kuopio University Hospital amd University of Eastern Filand (Finland), MUV (Austria), The Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany and Pasteur Institute, Paris, France.

2025

2029