CiliaBuilder: A Hair Prosthetic For Your Ears
Our Design
After researching drug development, technological aids such as implants, and epigenetics as possible methods of hearing restoration, we decided to create our own hearing prosthetic. CiliaBuilder combines principals of larger-scale prosthetics used in developing controllable body parts with the molecular-scale needed to deliver treatment to the cochlea.
The current design of CiliaBuilder consists of two parts: the structural body and the protein connector.
Structural Body: The structural body elongates the stereocilia, which improves hearing sensitivity.
Protein Connector: The protein connector binds to membrane proteins on damaged stereocilia, eliminating the need for surgery.
Basic CiliaBuilder Model
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Structural Body
Protein Connector
CiliaBuilder Prototype
In the cochlea, sound vibrations cause the endolymph, a cochlear fluid, to fluctuate. This fluctuation in turn displaces the stereocilia, which is converted to signals that the brain recognizes as sound.
However, when the stereocilia experiences damage, displacement is decreased because the stereocilia cannot receive endolymph fluctuations as effectively.
CiliaBuilder aims to fight stereocilia degeneration by elongating damaged stereocilia to healthy lengths, thereby restoring stereocilia to original levels of displacement.