Studies On The Protective Role Of Lipofectamine Mediated NT-3 Gene Transfection On Mice Cochlear Cells In Vitro

Cochlear hair cells and spiral ganglion cells play important roles in hearing maintenance. They can be injured to different extent by many local injury factors such as ototoxic medicine, noise injury, hypoxia and ischemia, which induce sensorineural hearing loss. Sensorineural hearing loss with high incidence is an important factor leading to hearing disability and can not be cured so far.Many studies have confirmed that various neurotrophic factors such as neurotrophin-3(NT-3) could play some roles in curing early sensorineural hearing loss, but its price is expensive and its degradation is quick in vivo. At the same time, the cochlea is a sophisticated and closed electrophysiological organ, and invasive local drug delivery should not be repeated, so, gene therapy, by which high drug concentration can be maintained in a longer period after one-time administration, has become the first choice. On the other hand, due to the absence of the ideal safe and efficient gene vector and the appropriate gene transfer approach, the inner ear gene therapy so far is still at the laboratory stage. Some issues on the distribution, metabolism, efficiency and bio-safety of the transfected gene still need be widely studied in vitro.This study performed primary culture of the cochlear spiral ganglion cells and the organ of Corti of neonatal C57/BL-6J mice, and then detected the NT-3 gene expression in above cells and organ, and the influence on the growth of spiral ganglion cells after gene transfection mediated by the new cationic liposome LipofectamineTM LTX & PLUS was evaluated. Meanwhile, the protective role of expression product of transfected NT-3 gene against gentamicin's damage to the cochlear hair cells and the spiral ganglion cells was observed. This research provides experimental data for cochlear gene therapy.