DECODING CELLULAR MECHANISMS FOR DENTAL PAIN

Pain is the most common symptom of disease or injury that brings patients to seek medical and dental therapy.

It can have a severe impact on our everyday life, and because of its prevalence it is a serious health and economic problem.

However, the ability to prevent, alleviate and cure tooth-related pain is greatly hampered by a lack of knowledge of how terminal dental pulp nerves are electrically activated.

Virtually any type of stimulus to exposed dentin, whether hot, cold acidic, very light mechanical or other, results in pain, which is puzzling.

We intend, on cellular and molecular levels, to unravel the functional identity of tooth-innervating trigeminal ganglion sensory neurons and resolve how external stimuli to the teeth are converted into electrical pain-producing signals at peripheral nerve endings.

We will employ cutting-edge techniques in mouse genetics, molecular imaging, computational science and behavioral analyses to precisely delineate the processes that underlie dental pain. We will apply single cell transcriptomics to obtain unambiguous identification of the neuron types involved.

Using novel optogenetic strategies with advanced behavioral analyses we will elucidate the cellular elements activated at dental pulp axon terminals.

Long-term project outcomes should broadly impact both basic pain-related neurobiology and practices for clinical pain therapy.