An 11-year-old boy with congenital deafness can now hear sound after he received groundbreaking gene therapy that replaces a mutated gene with the correct version, The New York Times reports.
“There’s no sound I don’t like,” said the boy Aissam Dam via interpreters to the NYT. “They’re all good.”
Dam’s deafness was due to a mutation to a gene called otoferlin, according to the news outlet. The gene makes a protein that’s a key component in relaying sound between the inner ear and brain, but a mutated version of the otoferlin gene impedes this process, impacting around 200,000 people across the globe.
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