DECIPHER, an international consortium on Neuropathic Pain led by King's College London, has been awarded €1.4m by ERA-NET Neuron to research the role of connective tissue in neuropathic pain.
Neuropathic pain is caused by nerve damage due to, for example, diabetes or cancer treatment. 38 million adults in Europe live with the condition. It feels different to other types of pain, and can cause shooting, stabbing and burning sensations. Unfortunately, painkillers do not work for neuropathic pain for most people.
DECIPHER, an international consortium led by Dr Franziska Denk at King's College London, is designed to change this and to find new treatment options that provide relief to people with neuropathic pain. The network will run for three years and includes specialists from many different disciplines as well as people who live with neuropathic pain themselves.
The consortium will investigate whether a particular type of connective tissue cell is responsible for chronic pain. For this, the scientists will use human nerves, taken as part of clinical diagnostics and donated for research, to test whether these connective tissue cells are related to how much pain someone experiences. The team will also study whether connective tissue can cause nerves to send abnormal electrical signals in laboratory models. Finally, they plan to find new painkillers against neuropathic pain, by identifying ways to soothe and quieten these connective tissue cells.
Neuropathic pain is terrible to live with - it can keep you awake at night and stops you from concentrating at work. The DECIPHER team and I are therefore keen to start our work to try and help the millions of people that have neuropathic pain.Thank you to ERA-NET Neuron for sponsoring us - together with our local funding agencies, their support will allow us to combine many different perspectives and skills to speed up our research.
Dr Franziska Denk, DECIPHER Lead, Reader in Neuroscience, Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience.
In addition to Dr Franziska Denk at King's College London, the DECIPHER consortium chief investigators are Professor Nurcan Üçeyler (Würzburg University Hospital, Germany), Dr Mateusz Kucharczyk (Łukasiewicz Research Network - PORT Polish Center for Technology Development, Poland), Professor Caroline Ospelt (University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland) and Professor Fatma Yeşim Parman (Istanbul University, Turkey).
In addition, Dr Denk is a partner on a second ERA-NET Neuron consortium, investigating the link between migraine and endometriosis. Her laboratory is based at the Wolfson Sensory, Pain and Regeneration Centre, part of the School of Neuroscience. She is the EDI Theme Representative for Pain and Addictions at the NIHR Maudsley BRC, and the Culture, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead of the School of Neuroscience.
