FAQ

Hough Ear Institute is a non-profit 501(c)(3) medical research organization working on therapeutics to restore hearing, educate our community on the importance of hearing health, and provide much-needed resources to build specialized ear clinics in areas where none are accessible.

No. Hough Ear Institute is a non-profit medical research institute that does not see patients. There are, however, two clinics that operates in our building staffed with some of the best otologists and audiologists in the region: SSM Health Otology and Audio Recovery, Inc.

As previously mentioned, we are not a clinic and do not handle patient information. You need to contact SSM Health Otology and/or Audio Recovery, Inc. for any and all hearing healthcare related issues.

For a complete rundown of all our technologies, click here. You can navigate to this link by clicking the “What We Do” tab at the top of our homepage.

Neither of our therapeutics are currently in clinical trials. The best way to stay informed about when and where those clinical trials will take place is by signing up for our newsletter. Our regeneration injection, AOK-1, is licensed by Boehringer Ingelheim and is expected to enter into clinical trials soon.

We do not maintain a database of possible patients for clinical trials. To sign up to be part of any clinical trial, you must visit clinicaltrials.gov, find the study in which you wish to participate, and apply there. We will announce the name of the study testing our therapeutics and where it is taking place in our newsletter, but beyond that, HEI has no involvement with clinical trials due to conflicts of interest.

Medical research of innovative, first-of-their-kind technologies is filled with a lot of uncertainty and red tape which can slow down even the most promising medicines. HEI is responsible for the preclinical research and development of our technologies and when they are ready for clinical development, they are passed on to pharmaceutical and/or commercialization partners with expertise in getting through clinical trials. We have no control over the timeline once we license our therapeutics to those partners.

All our preclinical research indicates both NHPN-1010 and AOK-1 are extremely promising. Our licensing partners for AOK-1 were so impressed they agreed to fund it through as many clinical trials as it passes – which is an incredible testament to our research data and its possible efficacy. We can’t be absolutely sure they work until we test them in human clinical trials, but our data leads us to be very optimistic.

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