Dr. Mingqian Huang is an investigator at Mass. Eye and Ear who aims to identify genes critical for regeneration of mammalian hair cells, the inner ear sensory cells that detect sound and sense balance.

Most of the hearing loss and vestibular dysfunction in humans is caused by irreversible loss of hair cells, which cannot be spontaneously regenerated. Using microarrays, Dr. Huang systematically studies expression profiles of genes in the mouse genome during inner ear development and has identified genes potentially important in inner ear developmental.

He also studies age-related and noise induced hearing loss. He has shown that by overexpression of an inner ear progenitor gene, Isl1, both forms of deafness can be significantly reduced. This is achieved primarily by promoting hair cell survival in both conditions. His laboratory is working on identifying Isl1 target genes to understand the protection mechanism as well as on screening for compounds to activate Isl1 for the hearing protection.