[arjie]

Through a mutual acquaintance, I met someone who did a little work for on the OTOF gene therapy and it really is remarkable stuff.

My wife and I had our embryos screened by Orchid Health since we have a related genetic condition: a pathogenic mutation in GJB-2. Amazingly, Decibel Therapeutics has has one of these in R&D and the OTOF success gives us hope. We have a few embryos that are affected and the more that can grow up healthy the more chances we'll have at children.

The technology itself is unbelievably futuristic: involving using a virus to deliver a repaired gene into existing cells.

This form of non-syndromic hearing loss may well be repaired two generations from now. An interesting thing is if you follow along with the literature, some Chinese labs report success with these gene therapies in kids on the cusp of teen age. That's remarkable. It will give a lot of people today the chance to have healthy kids in the future even if they were unfortunate enough to carry the genes today.

Personally, the fact that I can practically hold a whole genome sequence of our embryos on my computer means the future is here. Last time, I posted a few links for everyone interested in the subject https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40312242

[SJC_Hacker]

Screening can also "repair" inherited deafness through selection - you simply don't produce offspring to those that have the defect.