Exposure to heavy metals, an environmental toxin, has been shown to cause damage to a variety of different tissues and cell types including hair cells, the sensory cells of our inner ears responsible for hearing and balance. Elevated levels of one such metal, cadmium, has been associated with hearing loss and shown to cause hair cell death in multiple experimental models. While the mechanisms of cadmium-induced cell death have been extensively studied in other cell types they remain relatively unknown in hair cells. We have found that calcium signaling, known to be an important regulator of cadmium toxicity in other cell types, does not appear to play a significant role in cadmium-induced hair cell death. While calmodulin inhibition can partially protect hair cells this may be due to impacts on mechanotransduction activity, and inhibiting CaMKII, the IP3 receptor and the mitochondrial calcium uniporter all failed to protect against cadmium-induced hair cell death. We also found cadmium treatment increased pAkt levels in hair cells and pERK levels in supporting cells. This activation appears to be protective in nature as inhibiting these pathways enhanced cadmium-induced hair cell death rather than protecting cells. Thus cadmium-induced hair cell death appears distinct from cadmium-induced cell death in other cell types where calcium, Akt and ERK signaling pathways all promote cell death.

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