Pain in the dish

Preclinical models of pain are notorious for their poor ability to translate to humans, and are considered a large part of the reason advances in analgesics have been few and far between. Two independent groups have created pain fibers in vitroby reprogramming fibroblasts, and shown that the converted cells look, respond and behave like human peripheral pain neurons. The real coup will be adding genetics to the mix, and creating specialized pain fibers for screening personalized analgesics.

"Being able to complement genetic studies with a cell-based approach can lead us to discover specific pain modifying genes that may drive the development of new treatments," said Clifford Woolf, lead author on one of the studies, and professor of neurobiology at Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute...