Seminar – William Renthal, MD, PhD

Chronic pain and headache disorders are two leading causes of disability world-wide. Improving treatments for these conditions is a major focus of Dr. Renthal's lab as well as his clinical practice as a neurologist. The experience of pain begins with specialized peripheral sensory neurons (nociceptors) whose cell bodies reside in dorsal root ganglia at each spinal level or in the trigeminal ganglia at the skull base. Persistent hyperexcitability of nociceptors is thought to underlie many types of chronic pain, but major gaps remain in the understanding of this process. His group studies the molecular mechanisms underlying nociceptor sensitization with a special interest in headache disorders. Their long-term goal is to identify molecular features that are unique to nociceptors and to leverage this knowledge to develop novel, nociceptor-specific pain therapeutics. Toward this goal, his lab built single-cell gene expression atlases of both mouse pain models and human nociceptors and are using this information to control nociceptor activity through both genetic loss of function studies in mice and the development of nociceptor-specific viral vectors.