What I said mean that if researchers are talking more and more about proof of concept to application means that the possibility of restoring hearing loss must be getting closer. Instead of 20 years down the road perhaps they feel confident it'll happen much sooner than that.
As for "Genvec is currently in lead selection for the human candidate for adenovirally delivered Atoh1," I would suspect that they're getting ready at the human clinical trial level since this involves turning on ear sensory hair cells growth ("a genetic on switch") and allow it to "self-regenerate" new hair cells over damaged or missing ones and nothing about use of stem cells which would require more testing and research. Yet the Atoh1 is the most promising near term solution.
By the way, have you seen this one?
http://www.rnid.org.uk/VirtualContent/84925/Full_Nature_ad.pdf
