Steven Tyler and Roger Daltrey Funding Development of Vocal Cord Repair Gel
Scientists working at Boston's Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the funding help of hometown hero and Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler, are working on a special, almost magical gel that replicates the activity of a human vocal cord. It will be able to help the damaged voices of singers and, more importantly, cancer patients! The Who vocalist Roger Daltrey is also partly funding the endeavor.
According to The Week, the gel is injected directly into the vocal cord region (Isn't it vocal chord, you're saying? Well, we checked and everyone seems to use cord now), where it bonds with existing membranes. It then responds to things like breath and muscle tension by vibrating at a rate of nearly 200 times per second as though it were an actual vocal cord.
You could see how this is something worth supporting for Tyler and Daltrey, both known for their killer rock 'n' roll voices. Singer Julie Andrews is also contributing to funding. They all hope that the gel could be the catalyst to help those with bunk vocal cords to sing again. But like we said, more importantly, it could help Americans with throat cancer. Daltrey proclaimed, "It's not just for singers. There are millions of people who have no voice whatsoever." So the gel would become a voice for the voiceless.
The research is in the nascent stage and is being tested on animals, with researchers hoping that it could be in human clinical trials in 2012. "It's one of Steven's main ambitions to get this perfected in time to give Julie Andrews her proper voice back," Daltrey said.