18-month-old Opal Sandy from Oxfordshire, England, who was born deaf can now hear "almost normal for her age", including "soft sounds (like a soft whisper)" thanks to a new gene therapy called DB-OTO.
Due to a faulty gene, Opal was born with auditory neuropathy, which disrupts nerve impulses that travel from inside the ear to the brain. As part of the DB-OTO trial, which lasted 16 minutes, she was infused with a working copy of the gene.