Still in pre­clin­i­cal test­ing for ear gene ther­a­pies, Deci­bel touts small snap­shot of chemo-in­duced hear­ing loss drug

Though Deci­bel Ther­a­peu­tics has large­ly piv­ot­ed to­ward gene ther­a­pies for the in­ner ear, its lead clin­i­cal can­di­date sim­ply aims to pro­tect can­cer pa­tients from chemother­a­py-in­duced hear­ing loss. On Tues­day, the biotech pre­sent­ed its first ef­fi­ca­cy da­ta for the pro­gram, and ex­ecs like what they see.

Deci­bel re­port­ed in­ter­im re­sults from a Phase Ib study show­ing the ex­per­i­men­tal drug, dubbed DB-020, large­ly pro­tect­ed a small group of pa­tients from los­ing their hear­ing. Re­searchers used a par­tic­u­lar­ly unique study de­sign, ad­min­is­ter­ing the com­pound in one of each pa­tients’ ears be­fore they re­ceived cis­platin chemother­a­py and place­bo in the oth­er.

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