Dr. Yuan-Xiang Tao: ASOs lead to a long-lasting analgesic effect on neuropathic pain

In February 2023, Dr. Yuan-Xiang Tao’s lab published a paper in Br J Anaesth showing that intrathecal NIS-lncRNA antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) leads to a long-lasting analgesic effect on neuropathic pain caused by nerve trauma, chemotherapy, or diabetes mellitus. This work followed up his team’s previous exciting findings published in J Clin Invest last year (July 2022), which reported that a new identified nerve injury-specific long-noncoding RNA (NIS-lncRNA) promoted neuropathic pain by increasing the expression of CCL2, a small cytokine. Given that ASO strategy is an FDA-approved in clinical treatments of some neurological disorders, NIS-lncRNA ASOs may have potential application in clinical managements of neuropathic pain. A patent related to this work has been applied. This project is funded by a five-year $3.5-million NIH HEAL Initiative grant (2019-2024).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007091222005682?via%3Dihub
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/153563