"Understanding the Complexity of Pain – from proteins to networks"

Univ.-Prof. Manuela Schmidt, Ph.D., University of Vienna, Vice Dean - Faculty of Life Sciences

Chronic pain represents a major medical challenge. Enormous efforts have been invested towards deciphering the complexity of chronic pain at different levels (molecular, physiological, psychosocial, and behavioral) in both preclinical and clinical settings. While progress has been made, our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of chronic pain remains insufficient. Consequently, chronic pain treatment is often inadequate. It lacks efficacy in most patients and is associated with detrimental side effects culminating in the opioid crisis.  

Dr. Manuela Schmidt will discuss how recent advances in comprehensive proteome profiling can be exploited to decipher cellular protein networks relevant for pain-related disorders. She will initially introduce key principles and cellular components implicated in pain processing. Thereafter Dr. Schmidt will provide a brief methodological overview of proteomics and the mass spectrometry-based pain proteomics workflow established in her laboratory. Finally, she will highlight examples showing the successful integration of proteomics and phenotypic data to construct pain-related signaling networks, which helped reveal tissue-, pain-, and species-specific disease signatures of pain.
Overall, her presentation aims at showcasing how protein-based systems biology contributes to (i) uncovering mechanisms underlying chronic pain, and (ii) determining disease signatures associated with pain phenotypes across species. Ultimately, this knowledge will pave the way towards the identification of pain biomarkers and more effective treatments for pain-related conditions.