Today’s guest is Dr Haruna Suzuki-Kerr, Research Fellow at the University of Auckland in the Auditory & Vestibular Translational Neuroscience Cluster.

This episode is part of the Te Titoki Mataora Podcast Series, in collaboration with Te Titoki Mataora, the MedTech Research Translator.

Hearing loss is a common problem, in fact 1 in 6 people experience some form of hearing loss. Broadly speaking, hearing loss can be broken down into conductive hearing loss - think glue ear or damage to the ear drum - or sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). SNHL is the most common type of hearing loss, and is caused by a pathology of the cochlea, auditory nerve, or central nervous system.

The problem - the inner ear apparatus is embedded deep within the skull, is very small, and thus is very difficult to study.

Enter Dr Haruna Suzuki-Kerr. Haruna and her team, with seed funding fro m Te Titoki Mataori, are developing a novel, non-invasive, light-based, medical technology and device for the investigation of the 1) structure and 2) chemistry of the inner ear.

To date Haruna and her team have assembled a multi-disciplinary team to inform the design of their medical device and increase the likelihood of commercial success. The initial proof of concept will be tested in sheep tissue, before moving into live sheep model, and then into man!

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:00 The Different Types of Hearing Loss
04:50 Architecture of the Inner Ear
07:00 Studying Sensorineural Hearing Loss
11:00 Haruna's previous research experience and Holy Grail of this project
14:30 Inception of the Idea and Design
18:00 Why use light-based techniques?
22:30 Current Status of the Project
28:00 Commercialization Journey and TTM support
36:00 Next Steps for the Project and the ultimate goal

Keywords: hearing loss, sensorineural hearing loss, medical device, TTM, Te Titoki Mataora, biomedical science, research, research translation, medtech, medical technologies, university research, intellectual property, commercialization.

Using Light to Elucidate the Secrets of the Inner Ear | Dr Haruna Suzuki-Kerr | TTM Ep02