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Pain is an important signal alerting us to the possibility or occurrence of tissue injury. Chronic pain, however, is a pathological condition that does not serve any useful purpose, but results in a rather substantial loss of life quality. Indeed, chronic pain is on of the most common and costly health problems. Since virtually all known pharmacological targets for pain management have been saturated with small molecules agonists or antagonists, novel pain therapies depend on the identification of novel drug targets. |
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Mouse mutants have become an increasingly powerful tool for the analysis of nociceptive signalling. Mouse models have been established that show alterations at virtually all levels of pain perception, including mice with developmental defects in nociceptive neurons, mice in which primary nociceptive afferents do not respond appropriately to painful stimuli, mice with defects in the central processing of pain, mice with disruptions of the descending modulation of pain signalling, as well as mice in which dynamic adaptation of the nociceptive systems under pathological conditions are altered. These mouse strains help us to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms of pain signalling, and analgesic drug effects.
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Our laboratory has generated a number of mutant mouse strains with defects in nociceptive signalling. With these animals, we could better define the roles of modulatory opioid and tachykinin neuropeptides in nociception. In the context of the National Genome Network, we are also performing a nociception screen at the German Mouse Clinic. This screen has identified a number of novel interesting mouse mutants. |
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