Project 1 will use dorsal root ganglion (DRG) from organ donors and surgical patients with chronic pain, as well as spinal dorsal horn from organ donors. We will map the transcriptomes of individual cell types, understand the genomic architecture of these cells, and use ribosome profiling to gain deep insight into RNA translation diversity in the human pain pathway.
The second research project will use RNA sequencing on nerves and pathological tissues from patients with chronic low back pain and organ donor DRG. Patients will be recruited at the University of Washington (site PI Christoph Hofstetter). We will thoroughly phenotype patients and apply RNA sequencing techniques with cellular resolution to fundamentally advance our understanding of the molecular neuroscience underlying human chronic low back pain, and enable the discovery of therapeutic targets based on human molecular pathology.