14 DAY TRIAL // A collaboration of researchers from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) hopes to begin a small clinical trial next year. During this trial, experts will test a new gel they developed, which can mimic key traits of human vocal cords.
The innovation could benefit millions of people around the world, who lost their voice following standard medical procedures. Removing noncancerous lesions from the cords is one of the leading reasons why people lose their voices prematurely, and unfortunately permanently.
The new investigation was led by HMS professor of laryngeal surgery Steven Zeitels, who worked together with colleague Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute professor in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering.
Together, the experts have been working on developing a material that could help restore normal function to damaged vocal cords since 2002. In the team time, the team settled on using a polymer gel as their primary research focus.
This material can mimics key traits of human vocal cords, potentially helping countless mute people around the world. The approach could also help singers, a category of the population that places extra strain on their cords.
Scarring of the vocal cords is primarily responsible for the fact that as much as 6 percent of the US population is suffering from some kind of voice-related disorder. Intubation during surgery and laryngeal cancer are the main factors that cause such damage.
Addressing this issue “would be so valuable to society, because every time a person loses their voice, say, a teacher or a politician, all of their contributions get lost to society, because they can’t communicate their ideas,” Zeitels explains.
The gel itself was developed by former MIT researcher Sandeep Karajanagi, who developed it while working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Langer lab. The research team initially wanted to create a working, synthetic set of vocal cords, but that would have taken a lot more time.
“Scarred vocal cords are really hard to fix. People have tried this and that, but there’s really no commonly used, available approach that treats the inherent problem of scarring in the vocal folds,” says Nathan Welham, who was not a part of the study.
He holds an appointment as an assistant professor of otolaryngology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine. The expert explains that the team used polyethylene glycol (PEG) as a starting material because it is already approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Next year will represent a major milestone for the researchers, who will finally get to see their gel in action. The FDA will most likely classify it as an implantable medical device, rather than a drug, the team concludes.