Cochlear pioneer wins PM's science prize

The inventor of the cochlear implant, Prof Graeme Clark, will use the AUD$300,000 cheque from the 2004 Prime Minister's Science Prize he was awarded this week to establish a $6 million professorial chair in medical bionics at his Bionic Ear Institute in Melbourne.

And he's looking for another 20 or so Australians to match his contribution.

Clark also plans to set up a $20 million Centre in Medical Bionics at the Institute, to continue the research into nerve growth regeneration for applications including spinal cord repair, and put Australian researchers into the forefront of an emerging industry. "We need to give a visionary young person with fire in their belly, like I had, a chance to make new breakthroughs," he said.

Clark's career has been one of battling the odds. Despite the University of Melbourne appointing him as its founding professor of otolaryngology in 1970, Clark spent many years struggling to raise enough funding to finance the development of his pioneering cochlear implant. "I think I'm the only professor who had to raise money by shaking a tin," he said.

In fact, Clark's ideas of developing a multiple channel cochlear implant to allow people with severe to profound hearing loss to understand speech and other sounds were dismissed at the time by experts in the field, who believed it couldn't be done. But after 18 years of research, the first implant went into a patient in 1985, and the device was commercialised by the successful Australian company Cochlear (ASX:COH), which now owns 70 per cent of the global market for cochlear implants.

The final goal -- of near normal sound and clarity in hearing -- has yet to be achieved in cochlear implants, according to Clark. Recently, however, researchers at the Bionic Ear Institute, led by Clark, have used nerve growth factors to halt nerve cell degeneration and persuade the neurons to 're-sprout', and are working to develop a smart plastic interface connected to a new generation of bionic implants that will encourage the nerves to grow in the right direction.

"It's a very important advance and one of many we are making ... [and] it has the potential to make huge advances in other areas, such as regeneration of the spinal cord," he said. "I want to use my prize to push these areas of medical bionics."

Efforts are also being made to determine how to preserve or regenerate the hair cells, which transmit the sound waves to the nerve cells, which transmit the information to the brain. And a collaboration with researchers at the St Vincent's Institute of Medical Research on stem cells may lead to more progress in repairing damaged cochlear structures.

Other applications targeted for the interdisciplinary Centre for Medical Bionics include spinal cord repair and regeneration, as well as development of arterial stents impregnated with biomolecules, and an implant for the control and treatment of epileptic seizures.

Clark said that he expected to make significant progress in the development of the new generation of hearing devices over the next three years, depending on the availability of funding, and hopes that within five years a major advance would be made. "But without a substantial amount of funding, it will take a long time," he said.