Professor Colette McKay's expertise to support international project

veski innovation fellow, Professor Colette McKay, will be the senior consultant on a recently awarded National Institutes of Health (USA) grant for a Phase I safety study for a new auditory midbrain implant to restore hearing. This is an international collaboration between the Medical University Hannover, University of Minnesota and Cochlear Ltd.

Auditory midbrain implants (AMI) represent an emerging technology for hearing restoration in deaf people who are not candidates for a cochlear implant. For instance, those with a damaged auditory nerve (the target of a cochlear implant’s electrical stimulation) cannot receive benefit from a cochlear implant.

In her previous position as Chair in Applied Hearing Research at the University of Manchester (UK), Colette carried out psychophysics studies with five patients implanted with the AMI device developed by Prof Thomas Lenarz and colleagues in Hannover, Germany. These patients were implanted with a single-shaft electrode array in the auditory midbrain (inferior colliculus) and Colette’s research contributed to the new electrode design with two shafts.

Colette’s role as a consultant will be to travel to Hannover to work with the new AMI patients over the next five years.