This technology is a pharmaceutical composition for preventing or treating gentamicin-induced ototoxic hearing loss, using malic acid—an organic acid abundant in fruits like apples—as an active ingredient. It includes both a health functional food composition for preventing and improving hearing loss and a reagent composition for inhibiting hair cell damage caused by gentamicin.
Gentamicin, an aminoglycoside antibiotic, is essential for treating conditions like enterococcal endocarditis. However, reactive oxygen species generated by the antibiotic-calcium complex cause the death of inner ear hair cells, leading to irreversible hearing loss and kidney damage. Previous protective candidates relied on blocking reactive oxygen species, which weakened the antibiotic's efficacy by binding to it and lacked sufficient effectiveness due to non-specific action.
This technology confirms that treating gentamicin-damaged hair cells with malic acid restores the number of normal hair cells. Based on this, it utilizes malic acid—a TCA cycle intermediate and common food acidulant—as an ototoxic hearing loss protective agent. It can be applied to hearing loss prevention supplements for ICU patients on aminoglycosides, hearing-protective beverages or tablets, and cell-protective reagents for inner ear toxicity testing, enabling the development of accessible hearing protection products using an organic acid with proven safety as a food additive.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT’s Knowledge-Convergence Network-Based Design Platform for Accelerating the Synthesis and Evaluation of Hybrid Nanocomposites.
WO2024-154960A1
