Imagine the impact if there was a pill that could prevent hearing loss and regenerate the nerve endings inside the ear to restore hearing to people whose hearing has already declined.

In the U.S., hearing loss impacts the daily lives of 48 million people from young to old — in classrooms, in conversation, in business and social settings, even at home as they watch a football game or the news.

Otologic Pharmaceutics is out to prevent and reverse neural hearing loss. The two biggest causes of this condition (also known as nerve deafness) are aging and noise, which destroy the sensory hair cells and the nerve endings in the ear.

At age 65, about one in three people has a hearing loss, which may not be much of a surprise. However, a recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control states that about 10 percent of the entire millennial generation suffers from hearing loss. This damage may not show up until later, but it's happening today. The common culprits are everywhere: earbuds, loud music, concerts and TV, leaf blowers and lawn mowers, construction noise, and, for those in the military, explosions.

“We call the pill we are working on the bomb-blast pill,” said Dr. Richard Kopke, CEO of Hough Ear Institute and chief medical officer of Otologics. “In the military, blast injuries, which produce ringing in the ear and sound when there is nothing producing sound, are very common. It was a serendipitous discovery that as we were testing the pill as a therapy to prevent hearing damage, we discovered that it actually regrew the nerve endings that connect the inner ear to the brain, restoring hearing.”

Otologics is also testing its hearing loss prevention therapy in cancer treatments that involve cisplatin, a drug that is effective against multiple types of cancer but causes hearing loss in a significant percentage of patients. About 700,000 people a year are treated with cisplatin.