Vibrating Gel May Give New Voice to Throat-Cancer Patients
Source: Businessweek.com Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Bob Langer may be the last, best hope for aging rockers. Just ask Roger Daltrey, lead singer for The Who. Langer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher whose work has created two dozen biotech startups, is developing a gel that can vibrate up to 200 times a second -- replicating the action of human vocal cords -- to rejuvenate the damaged voices of singers such as Daltrey and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, both of whom have contributed funding for the project, along with actress Julie Andrews. More than 13,000 people diagnosed each year in the U.S. with throat tumors may end up being helped by the effort of the singers, the scientist and the surgeon who brought them together, Harvard University’s Steven Zeitels. Langer and Zeitels plan to test the gel next year in a cancer patient. “Unless you’ve been touched personally, it’s difficult to see, but there are millions of people who have no voice whatsoever,” said Daltrey, who was operated on for precancerous lesions in his throat two years ago, and couldn’t speak at all for two weeks. The gel will be injected into the vocal cords. Once there, it behaves the same way as the uninjured membrane, responding to breath and muscles tension by vibrating as if it was the real thing, Zeitels said. The research has been funded by the nonprofit patient organization, The Institute of Laryngology and Voice Restoration, where Andrews is an honorary chairwoman. ‘Sound of Music’ The research, [...]