We have patients with hearing back! We are not in the same league,” Chen says. At least two Western companies have been working on treatments for the exact same type of hearing loss but have not achieved as much success as the Chinese team. Other local governments in China have announced similar policies, which may attract more biomedicine companies into the field of gene therapy.Ĭhinese authorities also may be more willing to spend in this area given the fact that, at least in this one application of gene therapy, the country has raced ahead of its competitors in the West. In a bid to develop Shanghai’s competitiveness in the gene therapy industry, for instance, the municipal government has offered local companies sizable subsidies for developing new treatments a company can receive up to $13 million a year for manufacturing an approved gene therapy product locally in the city. One thing that may help is government subsidies. While costs aren’t a factor for experimental trials like the one Yiyi took part in, they will become more salient if the technology is to be introduced to the mass market. Only around 1% to 5% of cases of inborn deafness are caused by lack of otoferlin, so many more deaf children aren’t able to benefit from this therapy yet. This particular gene therapy works only when the deafness is due to a lack of otoferlin-a protein that’s produced to transmit hearing signals from the ear to the brain. Now, Qin told us, “she tells me she can hear the music that ends naptime and wake up by herself.”īut this remarkable result faces the same challenging calculations that plague a lot of medical solutions, both gene therapies and traditional medicine: they are used to treat a very specific and rare disease, so the market demand doesn’t justify the spending in R&D and mass production. She told us about how Yiyi, who is in the first grade, “used to need other students to wake her up” at naptime at school because she disconnects her cochlear implant when she’s sleeping. This is a phenomenal step forward in using gene therapy to restore human senses, and Antonio and I heard how important this is on a personal level from Qin Lixue, whose six-year-old daughter Yiyi is the third patient to participate in the trial. As we wrote, “Scientists in China say are the first people ever to have their natural hearing pathway restored … The feat is even more remarkable because until now, no drug of any kind has ever been able to improve hearing.” Four out of five participants have since developed the ability to hear. On Friday, Shu Yilai, a professor and practicing surgeon at Fudan University in Shanghai, shared results of the trial, in which young patients received injections of a virus that added replacement DNA to the hair cells in their inner ear. However, Zone Alarm prefers to deal with technical problems via the ticketed chat system.Īlthough the antivirus suites are prices similarly, Avast offers a free version and professional upgrade, while Zone Alarm only has one option.Last week, I worked with my colleague Antonio Regalado, our senior editor for biomedicine, to break a truly inspiring and honestly kind of wild story: Chinese scientists used gene therapy to restore hearing ability in children who were born deaf. They cover most devices and operating systems, with protection for Mac, Windows, and even voice-command tools like Alexa and Google Home.Īs for support, both companies offer similar options, including online documentation, live chat, and a 24/7 phone line. They also offer a password vault and computer tune-up which identifies unnecessary CPU usage. On the other hand, Avast focuses on WiFi protection, even over public networks. Zone Alarm uses a browser extension for its anti-phishing protection, provides 5GB of online backup space, and even has a ‘Find My Laptop’ feature should your machine be physically stolen. However, it’s the extra features that really set them apart. But Zone Alarm relies on a regularly-updated signature-based system while Avast focuses on identifying suspicious behaviors. Zone Alarm and Avast each receive top reviews, but which one is really the best? Their security is both top-quality, both offer anti-ransomware and anti-phishing, and both use sandboxing, which launches suspicious programs in secure virtual environments.
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