TY - JOUR T1 - An Antibody to RGMa Promotes Regeneration of Cochlear Synapses after Noise Exposure JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2020.07.01.183269 SP - 2020.07.01.183269 AU - Jerome Nevoux AU - Mihaela Alexandru AU - Thomas Bellocq AU - Lei Tanaka AU - Yushi Hayashi AU - Takahisa Watabe AU - Hanae Lahlou AU - Kohsuke Tani AU - Albert S.B. Edge Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/02/2020.07.01.183269.abstract N2 - Auditory neuropathy is caused by the loss of afferent input to the brainstem via the components of the neural pathway comprising inner hair cells and the first order neurons of the spiral ganglion. Recent work has identified the synapse between cochlear primary afferent neurons and sensory hair cells as a particularly vulnerable component of this pathway. Loss of these synapses due to noise exposure or aging results in the pathology identified as hidden hearing loss, an initial stage of cochlear dysfunction that goes undetected in standard hearing tests. We show here that repulsive axonal guidance molecule a (RGMa) acts to prevent regrowth and synaptogenesis of peripheral auditory nerve fibers with inner hair cells. Treatment of noise-exposed animals with an anti-RGMa blocking antibody regenerated inner hair cell synapses and resulted in recovery of wave-I amplitude of the auditory brainstem response, indicating effective reversal of synaptopathy.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -