Neuropathic Pain In-Vitro Model
Neuropathic pain is caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system. Prevalence of neuropathic pain is from 3% to 17% of population. Neuropathic pain impacts negatively patients’ life and their social environment. Mood disorders, depression, and anxiety are common consequences. A special form of neuropathic pain is trigeminal pain.
Causes of neuropathic pain are very different, as from trauma after surgery and injuries, as infections, cancer therapies, neurological diseases as multiple sclerosis, diabetic polyneuropathy, and others. Treatment options are limited, and new therapies would improve life of many patients. Dose escalation is often restricted due to side effects.
Hyperactivation and neuroinflammation are the drivers of neuropathic pain.
The Vincristine Model
Vincristine is known to induce neuropathic pain in human especially in children. Vincristine is suspected of up-regulating receptors of type: transient receptor potential vanilloid 1, TRPV1.
We tested vincristine as a model compound for neuropathic pain in neuronal cell cultures on a microelectrode array 48-well plates from Axion Biosystems.
Cell Culture
We offer this assay with primary frontal cortex neurons, dorsal root ganglia or trigeminal neurons from mice or with human iPSC-derived sensory neurons.
Example
First, we cultivated human iPSC-derived sensory neurons for 21 days in vitro. Second, we cultivated primary frontal cortex cultures from the mouse on embryonic day 16 for 28 days in vitro. Vincristine on IPSC-derived sensory neurons showed after 1 hour excitatory effects after vincristine application at 40 nM concentration with increased spike rate and burst rate. On frontal cortex cultures, an immediate impact could not be observed. After 48 hours, we saw an excitation for 15 nM but not for 45 nM.
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