Gina M. Story, Ph.D.

DEPARTMENT OF Anesthesiology
Keywords: inflammation, injury, neurobiology, pain, thermo TRP ion channels

Thermosensation represents a significant component of pain sensation. For example, cold sensation is altered in some chronic pain states: patients with neuropathic pain (an ongoing pain state caused by nervous system injury) often suffer from cold allodynia (a painful response to an otherwise non-painful cooling stimulus). Although successful treatments of pain do exist, many are inadequate for some conditions or cause unacceptable side effects suggesting a search for new therapeutic targets is warranted.

Research in my laboratory is focused on the molecular basis of detection of both painful and pleasant touch stimuli in healthy and diseased states. We start with the basic physiological and anatomical framework of the peripheral sensory neuron. These neurons originate within the dorsal root ganglia (DRG), innervate targets such as the skin and joints and represent a "first response system" for relaying information regarding our environment. Until rather recently, how the DRG neurons sense cold, heat or mechanical stimuli at the molecular level and then relay that information to the spinal cord and brain has remained particularly elusive.

It is now known that members of a specialized group of T ransient R eceptor P otential (TRP) ion channel proteins directly detect thermal and chemical stimuli corresponding to sensations of heat, cold and pain. Some of these proteins (dubbed thermoTRPs) are found specifically in specialized skin cells, while others are expressed in specialized subsets of DRG neurons. We utilize thermoTRP channels as molecular markers of temperature- and pain-sensing neurons. By examining these neurons further at the molecular and functional level, our aim is to uncover additional mechanisms involved in acute, inflammatory and chronic pain states. To this end, we employ techniques such as molecular biology, gene expression profiling (microarrays), electrophysiology, live-cell imaging, mouse genetics and behavior.