Rate My Professor Elaine Wong

Dr. Elaine Wong is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University. She also serves as Head of Hearing Therapeutics at Ear Science Institute Australia, Senior Research Fellow at both Curtin University and Ear Science Institute Australia since July 2017, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Ear Sciences Centre, University of Western Australia. Wong obtained her Bachelor of Science in Biology and Biotechnology in 1999, Master of Philosophy in Molecular Biology in 2002, and Doctor of Philosophy in Developmental Biology in 2006, all from the University of Hong Kong. Her PhD thesis examined Hoxb3 regulation of inner ear, craniofacial, and hindbrain patterning. She was a visiting scholar in inner ear neurobiology at the University of Iowa in 2008 and completed postdoctoral training in inner ear developmental and regenerative biology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York from 2010 to 2013. Prior to joining Ear Science in 2017, she held the position of Research Assistant Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong from 2013 to 2017.

Wong's research focuses on inner ear organoids from pluripotent stem cells for patient-specific models of ear development, inner ear developmental biology, and molecular genetics for hearing therapies. Her interests include genetic and molecular mechanisms of human deafness, hair cell regeneration in the mammalian inner ear, regulatory networks in age-related hearing loss, Branchio-oto-renal syndrome, and Usher syndrome. She develops human pluripotent stem cell differentiation to inner ear tissue for Usher syndrome models and investigates transcription factors in hair cell regeneration. Her research has attracted over $3.5 million in funding from Australian, Hong Kong, and China sources, fostering collaborations with the Lions Eye Institute, University of Newcastle, Peking Union Medical College, Southern University of Science and Technology, and the University of Hong Kong. Key publications include "Current approaches for Usher syndrome disease models and developing therapies" (2025), "Polymer-Based Nanoparticles for Inner Ear Targeted Trans Differentiation Gene Therapy" (2024), "Generation of two induced pluripotent stem cell lines from an Usher syndrome type 1B patient with the homozygous c.496del MYO7A variant" (2024), "Bile Acids – Friend or Foe? A Review of Pathological Significance and Therapeutic Potential" (2024), "Overcoming barriers: a review on innovations in drug delivery to the middle and inner ear" (2023), and "Usher Syndrome: Genetics and Molecular Links of Hearing Loss and Directions for Therapy" (2020). Her work advances gene therapies and stem cell approaches for sensorineural hearing loss.