Heartbreak was felt across the globe when the beloved Julie Andrews announced the end of her singing career on a grim day in 1997. No longer could she persuade us that just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. No longer could she assuage our fears when a thunderstorm strikes. What were her favorite things again? Raindrops on noses and stickers of kittens? The world may never know.
Along with the former Miss Poppins, approximately 6% of the US population suffers from some kind of voice disorder. Most cases involve vocal cord scarring due to intubation during surgeries, while others are from surgeries combating laryngeal cancers. Although there are no permanent solutions for vocal cord scarring, current dermatological and surgical approaches provide temporary treatment. However, hope may be in the near future—albeit, in the form of a gel.
Robert Zeitels of Harvard University, who was Julie Andrew’s laryngeal surgeon, teamed up with Steven Langer, a chemical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to synthesize a gel that can act as a substitute for vocal cords. The material that the Harvard-MIT team produced was a variation of polyethylene glycol (PEG), a polyether that has already been approved by the FDA in other medical applications.
Image Source: JGI/Jamie Grill
Zeitels and Langer set out to discover the perfect structure of PEG that is able to mimic the viscoelasticity of vocal cords, a critical characteristic of vocal cords that allows them to vibrate and produce sound when air is expelled through the lungs. After altering the structure and linkage of PEG in multiple trials, they found that a PEG structure named PEG30 was the perfect match. Blowing air on vocal-fold models of PEG30 produced vibrations that were strikingly similar to those made by natural vocal cords.
If approved by the FDA, PEG30 will be able to restore voices in those suffering from various voice disorders through injection into scarred vocal cords. As of now, clinical trials have only been conducted on dogs, and no damage was detected after four months post-injection. This is good news to Zeitels and Langer, who hope to start human clinical trials of PEG30 injections next year.
It may not be too long before the hills are alive with the sound of music—and the voices of the voiceless—once again. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, vocal cord scarring.
Feature Image Source: Choking – 365 Day 59 by Rocky Sun
