{"id":294276,"date":"2026-02-12T13:47:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T13:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/294276\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T13:47:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T13:47:17","slug":"time100-health-jonathon-whitton-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/294276\/","title":{"rendered":"TIME100 Health: Jonathon Whitton | TIME"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rich-text mb-6 self-baseline font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\" data-testid=\"paragraph-content\">About 1 in 500 infants in the U.S. is born with hearing loss, most often caused by genetic factors. Hearing aids or cochlear implants can help children hear better, but kids fitted with these devices still often have a hard time hearing sounds that are far away or in noisy environments. <\/p>\n<p class=\"rich-text mb-6 self-baseline font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\" data-testid=\"paragraph-content\">Jonathon Whitton, a clinician-scientist, is leading Regeneron\u2019s efforts to develop gene therapies to treat hearing loss in children. In October, the company <a href=\"https:\/\/investor.regeneron.com\/news-releases\/news-release-details\/db-oto-results-new-england-journal-medicine-showcase-dramatic\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">announced<\/a> promising results from a small trial that tested a gene therapy in children with profound hearing loss caused by a genetic deficiency of the protein otoferlin, which affects an estimated 50 newborns in the U.S. every year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rich-text self-baseline font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee mb-0 focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\" data-testid=\"paragraph-content\">Of the 12 children who received the gene therapy, 11 experienced meaningful improvements to their hearing, including some who developed normal hearing within a few months. Whitton says it\u2019s been tremendous to see how transformational the therapy can be. \u201cI live elated,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 1 in 500 infants in the U.S. is born with hearing loss, most often caused by genetic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[47092,9810,103,397,396,61,60,28976,709,47094,12277,139977],"class_list":{"0":"post-294276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-accolades","9":"tag-franchise","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-list","16":"tag-magazine","17":"tag-special-project","18":"tag-sponsorshipblock","19":"tag-time100-health-2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}