Pain Circuits
Persistent pain remains a major clinical problem due in large part to an incomplete understanding of its underlying neuronal circuits and mechanisms. Our work in this area has focused on identifying the circuitry required for mechanical allodynia, a condition in which touch becomes painful in the setting of injury as well as circuitry that conveys spontaneous pain.
We are also working to transform the molecular and cellular organization of the dorsal horn across species using single cell transcriptomics, open chromatin and spatial transcriptomics together with bioinformatics and machine learning pipelines in collaboration with the Pfenning Lab at CMU. The goal is to use the species integrated atlas of neuron subtypes and open chromatin datasets to create libraries of neuron subtype specific enhancers that can be used to study the circuitry in mice and macaques and develop novel gene therapies for chronic pain patients.
To study the neural circuitry, our laboratory uses a combination of single cell sequencing, chemogenetics, viral tracing, spatial transcriptomics, DREADDs, electrophysiology and behavior.