Natural Multifunctional Silk Microcarriers for Noise-Induced Hearing Loss Therapy

Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a common outcome of excessive reactive oxygen species in the cochlea, and the targeted delivery of antioxidants to the inner ear is a potential therapeutic strategy. In this paper, a novel natural biomaterials-derived multifunctional delivery system using silk fibroin-polydopamine (PDA)-composited inverse opal microcarriers (PDA@SFMCs) is presented for inner ear drug delivery and NIHL therapy. Due to their large specific surface area and interpenetrating nanochannels, PDA@SFMCs can rapidly load active biomolecules making them a convenient medium for the storage and delivery of such molecules. In addition, surface modification of PDA enables the microcarriers to remain in the round window niche, thus facilitating the precise local and directed delivery of loaded drugs. Based on these features, it is demonstrated here that n-acetylcysteine-loaded silk microcarriers have satisfactory antioxidant properties on cells and can successfully prevent NIHL in guinea pigs. These results indicate that the natural multifunctional silk microcarriers are promising agents for local inner ear drug delivery in the clinic.