Dr. Peter Steyger, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery
Oregon Hearing Research Center, OHSU

Dr. Sigrid Myrdal, Ph.D.
Staff Scientist
Oregon Hearing Research Center, OHSU

Dr. Peter Steyger is one of those rare scientists whose scientific passion is combined with true personal investment in the subject of his research. When he was 14 months old, Dr. Steyger contracted meningitis that was treated with the antibiotic streptomycin. One of the unfortunate side effects of this drug is damage to the auditory system, and Dr. Steyger suffered severe loss of hearing in both ears.

Based on his own personal experience, Dr. Steyger points out that children who lose their hearing often experience related problems, such as learning, motor and speech disorders and depression. By helping children retain their hearing, science can significantly improve their quality of life. “When you become deafened, you lose an incredible source of information about the world around you,” he says. “It’s very easy to become isolated.”

Dr. Steyger spent his own childhood in Stockport, England, and has spent his entire scientific career studying inner ear anatomy and ototoxicity, beginning with his Ph.D. at Keele University in the United Kingdom, and then moving to the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He joined Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon (OHSU) in 1997 after working as senior research associate at the Neurological Sciences Institute, which is now part of OHSU. His native background is still reflected in the characteristic English (Mancunian) accent of his speech.

Dr. Steyger credits Self-Help for the Hard of Hearing (SHHH), the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, and the National Association for the Deaf for helping him realize that there are “extremely strong role models” who live well with hearing loss, such as Vinton Cerf (development of the Internet) and Curtis Pride, baseball player.

“Mainstream society is remarkably tolerant of people who explain what they need,” he says. “It’s very important that you’re aware of your own hearing loss, because then you can articulate what you need. That builds self-esteem and forges an identity that will allow you to reach your potential.”

Now as assistant professor of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery at the Oregon Hearing Research Center, Dr. Steyger is in a position to look for ways to prevent drug-induced hearing loss. His research has focused on understanding and preventing ototoxicity induced by aminoglycosides, the class of antibiotics that caused his own hearing loss. In 2001, Dr Steyger was joined in his efforts by Dr. Sigrid Myrdal.

Dr. Myrdal planned her career when she was five years old. “I’m going to cure cancer,” she said, knowing little more than that it was something everyone feared. That remained her focus through an unusually broad range of studies, starting with an undergraduate professional chemistry degree. This was followed by a second undergraduate degree in biology, a Ph.D. in developmental biology, and two postdoctoral fellowships studying various aspects of the biology of cancer. Her career led her to working at the biotechnology start-up, Oncogen, in Seattle, Washington, which became a part of the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb.

All of this exposed Dr. Myrdal to a variety of biological subjects, including cardiocytes, kidney epithelial cells, fibroblasts, immune cells, and mammary epithelial cells. Biotechnology discovery led her to the study of numerous pathologies besides cancer, including cystic fibrosis, bone regeneration, and immune suppression. “Up until a couple of years ago, about the only organ system I hadn’t encountered was the inner ear,” she quips.

Dr. Myrdal first met Dr. Steyger in 1998 as one of his instructors at a confocal microscopy course in Vancouver, BC. An opportunity in his lab in 2001 brought her out of early retirement into this unusual collaboration. “The inner ear is the most interesting biological system I have ever studied,” she says. “It draws on every scrap of my previous scientific experience."

Because ototoxic drugs also damage portions of the kidney, the combination of inner ear experience coupled with in vitro manipulation of kidney epithelial cells has proven to be a potent mixture in re-assessing how ototoxic drugs damage the inner ear. The goal of this collaborative research, largely supported by the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communications Disorders, is to develop prevention strategies that will allow antibiotics such as streptomycin to be used without harming the inner ear sensory hair cells. Their recent focus has been on the mechanisms that allow ototoxic drugs to penetrate both inner ear hair cells and kidney cells.

“We have now found the mechanisms by which aminoglycoside antibiotics, as well as certain other ototoxic drugs, including some anti-cancer agents, enter these cells,” they report enthusiastically. As a result, drugs that are currently used cautiously, and in limited circumstances, could be used more aggressively without inducing hearing loss or kidney damage.

An interesting potential offshoot of these discoveries is that mechanisms analogous to those involved in blocking drug uptake into inner ear and kidney cells might be reversed in some tumor cells, and thereby specifically heighten the uptake of certain anti-cancer agents into their target cells. “This would be especially gratifying to me,” says Dr. Myrdal. In 1986, she was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia and underwent a long and arduous bone marrow transplant at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “I didn’t know that while I was trying to 'cure cancer,' cancer was silently fighting back." She won that battle when her own cancer was cured.

Now this unexpected collaboration between an inner ear researcher and a cancer researcher may produce therapeutic benefits in both areas.

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP is proud to feature Dr. Peter Steyger and Dr. Sigrid Myrdal as Inventors of the Month. We offer our congratulations to them both in forming an innovative collaboration that may resonate in both of the seemingly unrelated areas that individually called them so many years ago.

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