About the Authors

Xiaoping Du

Affiliation Hough Ear Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America

Donald L. Ewert

Affiliation Hough Ear Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America

Weihua Cheng

Affiliation Hough Ear Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America

Matthew B. West

Affiliation Hough Ear Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America

Jianzhong Lu

Affiliation Hough Ear Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America

Wei Li

Affiliation Hough Ear Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America

Robert A. Floyd

Affiliation Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America

Richard D. Kopke

rkopke@houghear.org

Affiliations Hough Ear Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America, Departments of Physiology and Otolaryngology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America

Competing Interests

Richard Kopke and Robert Floyd have a financial interest in Otologic Pharmaceutics Inc. which has a license for the development of HPN-07 for treatment of hearing loss and brain injury. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: XD DE RF RK. Performed the experiments: XD DE WC WL JL. Analyzed the data: XD DE RK. Wrote the manuscript: XD DE MW RF EK.