Xiaodong Tan
Northwestern University, IL·Pharmacology
Cisplatin is a powerful cancer drug used in about 40% of chemotherapy regimens. It also damages the inner ear and causes an estimated 100,000–300,000 new cases of hearing loss each year among US cancer patients.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
cisplatin
ototoxicity
hearing loss
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Confirm that honokiol protects hearing and activates sirtuins, enzymes that drive the cell's antioxidant defenses, in tumor-bearing mice receiving cisplatin chemotherapy.
- Test whether SIRT1, a sirtuin found in the cytoplasm and nucleus, is needed for honokiol's protection against cisplatin-induced hearing loss, using SIRT1-deficient mice.
- Determine the roles of the mitochondrial sirtuins SIRT3 and SIRT5, and whether they compensate for each other, using SIRT3 knockout and isocitrate dehydrogenase 2 knockout mice.
- Map platinum in the inner ear with X-ray fluorescence microscopy, and measure outer hair cell loss with immunostaining, confocal imaging and X-ray micro-CT.
More about the research
The damage comes from reactive oxygen species (ROS), harmful oxygen-containing molecules that kill outer hair cells, the sound-amplifying cells of the cochlea. Antioxidants can soak up ROS, but they can also weaken cisplatin and protect tumor cells. No treatment for cisplatin-induced hearing loss is approved.
Why it matters
Cancer patients treated with cisplatin often lose hearing permanently, and no approved therapy prevents it. This work aims to lay the groundwork for a clinical trial giving honokiol alongside cisplatin to protect hearing without weakening chemotherapy. It may also inform protection against noise-induced, other drug-induced and age-related hearing loss.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Su-Hua Sha
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Neuroscience
Test whether prolonged activation of AMPKα, an energy-sensing enzyme, by CaMKK2, LKB1 or reactive oxygen species triggers outer hair cell death after noise exposure in adult mice, using virus-delivered shRNA to silence these genes.
Ian Mertes
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Neuroscience
Determine whether medial olivocochlear (MOC) reflex strength, measured by contralateral inhibition of otoacoustic emissions, predicts whether normal-hearing adults report difficulty understanding speech in background noise.
Lisa Goodrich
Harvard University, MA·Neuroscience
Define how the transcription factor Gata3 controls c-Maf and Mafb through effects on chromatin, using assays of chromatin structure and subtype-specific gene expression in spiral ganglion neurons.
The school
Northwestern University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 536 research doctorates a year.
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