New hope

London, Oct. 23: Dame Julie Andrews, who lost her voice after an operation on her vocal cords, could be helped to sing again with the aid of a new type of gel implant.

The first patient trials of the gel, which has been designed to repair scarred vocal cords, are expected to begin within two years.

Dame Julie, 74, who has been involved in the project since it was launched in the US seven years ago, could be among the first to benefit from the technique. The star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music once boasted a range of five octaves, but her career was ended in 1997 by surgery to remove non-cancerous nodules from her vocal cords.

The operation damaged the elasticity of the cords and caused scarring, which deepened her singing voice and left her struggling to hold a note. She won $1 million in an out-of-court settlement from her surgeons.

New hope of restoring her voice has emerged from research led by Prof. Robert Langer, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Prof. Steve Zeitels of Harvard Medical School.

A team from Langer’s laboratory created the gel from a new type of polyethylene glycol polymer, which mimics the collagen and elastin proteins of the vocal cords. Zeitels’ team is preparing to treat patients suffering from vocal scarring by excising scar tissue and injecting the gel into their vocal cords.

Professor Langer said: “The hope is to start human trials in a year or two. So far,

the animal trials have looked very promising. The surgeon might take out some of the

scar tissue and inject some of the gel and that might give you the right elasticity

in the throat. At this point we haven’t solved the problem, but I hope that we’ll

have solved the problem in time.”

Professor Langer said that Dame Julie, who spoke at a press conference in 2002 to

launch the project, was a strong supporter of the research. “I don’t want to promise

we’ll do it on Julie Andrews, but she’s been a big proponent of it,” he added. He

was in London yesterday to receive the €1 million (£942,000) Millennium Technology

Prize for new materials he has developed that are used in drug delivery and tissue

engineering.

With more than 600 patents, the professor is among the most prolific of all medical

inventors and pioneered the development of polymer casings, which release drugs into

the body in a controlled manner.

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