May 26, 2004

SIU Med School Receives NIH Grant to Study Hearing

A physician researcher at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield has been awarded a three-year federal grant from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders to study the mechanisms by which the anti-cancer drug, cisplatin, causes damage to the inner ear. Total budget for the grant is $975,975.

Dr. Leonard Rybak, Ph.D., professor of otolaryngology, is the principal investigator for the project. The study will look at cultures from the inner ear tissue obtained from mice to learn which molecules cause the hearing loss. This research has important implications for future development of an antidote to prevent the side effect of hearing loss for patients who take cisplatin as a treatment for cancer.

He also received a one-year grant from the American Otological Society to study cell transplantation as a way to repair inner ear damage and reverse hearing loss. The total budget for the second grant is $40,000. George A. Dunaway, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology, is the co-principal investigator.

Rybak's research has been funded for 22 years by the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders. He has focused on looking at other types of drugs that caused hearing loss, which has lead to the development of medications for use as antidotes for cisplatin and other drugs as well as studying the normal development of the inner ear. His research at SIU has totaled more than $4.9 million.

Rybak joined the SlU faculty in 1981. He completed his doctoral degree as well as a residency in otolaryngology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis (1979). Rybak earned his medical degree at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee (1973). He earned his bachelor's at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy (1969).

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