Delivery of therapy to the inner ear via magnetic nanoparticles

It is difficult to deliver drugs into the inner ear because it is located deep in the skull and isolated from general circulation by the blood-labyrinth barrier. The standard-of-care for treating sudden hearing loss and other hearing problems has been to either inject steroids trans-tympanically into the middle ear and to rely on free diffusion of drugs from the middle into the inner ear, a procedure that creates undesirable drug gradients along the cochlea, or to administer steroids orally, procedures which result in widely varying patient outcomes.