Cathy Yea Won Sung, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology, received a three-year, $739,338 grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to study the role of immune cells in hearing loss caused by the chemotherapeutic drug cisplatin. The project is titled, “Roles of Macrophages in Cisplatin-induced Hearing Loss.”

Cisplatin is a widely used chemotherapeutic drug with ototoxic properties that result in the loss of sensory hair cells in the cochlea, leading to permanent hearing loss. Previous studies in mouse models have shown that ablating macrophages (immune cells) using PLX3397 provides complete protection against cisplatin-induced hearing loss and reduces cisplatin accumulation in the cochlea compared to mice with intact macrophages.

The cochlea contains specialized tissue-resident macrophages called perivascular macrophages, which surround the blood-labyrinth barrier. Cisplatin is known to enter the cochlea through this barrier. In this study, Dr. Sung and her lab will investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which macrophages regulate blood-labyrinth barrier permeability during cisplatin-induced ototoxicity. Their research will include both non-tumor-bearing and tumor-bearing mouse models with the goal of developing therapies aimed at excluding cisplatin from the cochlea, and therefore, protecting hearing in mice. These findings could then potentially lead to protecting the hearing of cancer patients undergoing cisplatin-based chemotherapy.

Dr. Sung joined the Department of Biology in August 2025. She was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Hearing Biology and Therapeutics at NIDCD.

Congratulations Dr. Sung!