Bo Hua Hu
University of Texas at Dallas, TX·Neuroscience
Hearing loss differs between men and women. Women have less hearing loss overall, but millions still have hearing impairment.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Microbiology & Immunology
Physiology
- Topics
hearing loss
sex differences
cochlea
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2028
What they work on
- Determine how galectin-3, a sugar-binding immune protein, maintains hearing and cochlear structure, using mice in which the Lgals3 gene that encodes it has been disrupted.
- Identify the immune mechanisms that make female mice especially vulnerable to age-related cochlear degeneration when galectin-3 is missing, focusing on cochlear immune cells and supporting cells.
- Determine how female hormones regulate which genes are switched on in the cochlea and how they interact with galectin-3 and other female-linked molecules that affect susceptibility to hearing loss.
More about the research
Many begin losing hearing in middle age, and the loss often worsens after menopause. This female hearing loss usually affects the low and middle sound frequencies that people need to understand speech. Autoimmune disorders, which are more common in women, add to immune-related hearing problems. Still, the biological reasons women's ears become vulnerable are poorly understood, and doctors lack tools to find the cause in individual patients.
Why it matters
Millions of women live with hearing loss that often begins in middle age, worsens after menopause, and affects the speech frequencies needed for conversation. Identifying the molecules and immune processes behind female vulnerability could lead to biomarkers and diagnostic tools that reveal the cause of a woman's hearing loss. Over time, this knowledge could also support sex-specific treatments.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Su-Hua Sha
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Neuroscience
Test whether prolonged activation of AMPKα, an energy-sensing enzyme, by CaMKK2, LKB1 or reactive oxygen species triggers outer hair cell death after noise exposure in adult mice, using virus-delivered shRNA to silence these genes.
Lisa Goodrich
Harvard University, MA·Neuroscience
Define how the transcription factor Gata3 controls c-Maf and Mafb through effects on chromatin, using assays of chromatin structure and subtype-specific gene expression in spiral ganglion neurons.
Ljiljana Pasa-Tolic
University of Arizona, AZ·Biochemistry
Refine a liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) proteomics platform for sensitive, high-throughput protein profiling of single spiral ganglion neurons, which relay sound from the inner ear.
The school
University of Texas at Dallas: 16 labs on PI Pages, $182M a year on research, 239 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.