First human trial looms for Rinri’s cell therapy to regenerate inner ear nerve connections to brain

The principal cause of hearing conditions such as age-related hearing loss (presbycusis) and auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) is the loss of nerve connections in the ear.  Consider that such conditions affect over 100 million people worldwide, and you get a sense of what it would mean if those nerve connections could be regenerated.

© Rinri Therapeutics

In the leading pack of outfits looking for this regenerative route through gene therapy is Rinri Therapeutics, which is backed by leading investors Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, UCB Ventures, Pioneer, and The University of Sheffield, (plus non-dilutive funding). Rinri’s scientific team has developed a product, Rincell-1, that uses the pioneering OSPREY platform for “generating allogeneic “off-the-shelf” regenerative cell therapies for neural hearing loss”. And with commercialisation of of Rincell-1 in sight, and preclinical safety and efficacy data already achieved, the product is expected to start first-in-human proof-of-concept trials in 2025.

 

Surgical access through round window to nerve connections

 

Until now, delivery of the technique has meant use of extremely invasive surgery to reach nerve connections deep within the skull. But, funded by Rinri Therapeutics, researchers from the universities of Nottingham and Sheffield, King’s College London, Canada and Sweden, have now discovered a new safe and reliable way to access these nerves through the inner ear’s round window, and this far less invasive and more accessible approach was written up and published on November 5, 2024 in the journalScientific Reports (Nature).

“The novel access route developed in elegant work by this team of leading hearing loss researchers and surgeons makes the delivery of transformative cell therapies like Rincell-1 possible. We’re delighted that the first-in-human trial for our lead product is on track to start in 2025, bringing the potential to transform the lives of people with neural hearing loss,” said Dr. Simon Chandler, CEO of Rinri Therapeutics.

And Chief Medical Officer at Rinri, Professor Doug Hartley, describing the “novel” surgical access, says it will provide “a therapeutic pathway to the cochlear nerve which is expected to be highly valuable in clinical practice as part of regenerative cell therapy for this global unmet medical need”.

All eyes on regenerative cell therapy for 2025’s major research news stories in audiology.

Source: University of Sheffield/Rinri