Cancer pain has a major impact on quality of life and clinical treatment of patients. Oral cancer patients rate pain as their worst symptom. Effective treatment of cancer pain remains a critical, unmet goal in cancer research. The proposed study will provide a molecular rationale for the development of mechanism-based therapeutic treatments to reduce oral cancer pain, and cancer pain in general, and allow patients to regain their function. Cancer cells and cancer-associated stromal cells secrete a complex ensemble of bioactive factors into their surroundings to promote cancer growth. A subset of these molecules also sensitizes nociceptors on nearby primary afferent sensory neurons, creating crosstalk among nociception and cancer growth pathways. The proposed research is a targeted sampling and proteomic approach to characterize pain-producing proteases and peptides within the cancer microenvironment. The experimental advantage of our intraoperative microdialysis collection technique is the direct sampling of cancer-associated proteins and peptides in vivo. The nociceptive effect of molecules will be evaluated and confirmed using a well- established cancer pain mouse model. Secreted proteases are promising, yet largely unexploited drug targets for manipulating the levels of pain-producing peptides. We hypothesize that selective inhibition of specific proteases will decrease levels of nociceptive peptides in the cancer environment and relieve cancer-associated pain. The data generated from the proposed studies will provide the molecular basis for an entirely new perspective with which to understand and treat cancer pain.

Public Health Relevance

The Public Health relevance of this project is that successful completion will provide the foundation for a clinical trial based on the pain-producing molecules that we discover. Ultimately, this work could lead to improved treatment for cancer pain.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research (NIDCR)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DE019796-04
Application #
8519104
Study Section
Somatosensory and Chemosensory Systems Study Section (SCS)
Program Officer
Kusiak, John W
Project Start
2010-09-10
Project End
2015-08-31
Budget Start
2013-09-01
Budget End
2014-08-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2013
Total Cost
$461,531
Indirect Cost
$82,875
Name
New York University
Department
Type
Schools of Dentistry
DUNS #
041968306
City
New York
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
10012
Scheff, Nicole N; Ye, Yi; Bhattacharya, Aditi et al. (2017) Tumor necrosis factor alpha secreted from oral squamous cell carcinoma contributes to cancer pain and associated inflammation. Pain 158:2396-2409
Yamano, Seiichi; Viet, Chi T; Dang, Dongmin et al. (2017) Ex vivo nonviral gene delivery of ?-opioid receptor to attenuate cancer-induced pain. Pain 158:240-251
Ye, Yi; Bernabé, Daniel G; Salvo, Elizabeth et al. (2017) Alterations in opioid inhibition cause widespread nociception but do not affect anxiety-like behavior in oral cancer mice. Neuroscience 363:50-61
Iwai, Shoko; Weinmaier, Thomas; Schmidt, Brian L et al. (2016) Piphillin: Improved Prediction of Metagenomic Content by Direct Inference from Human Microbiomes. PLoS One 11:e0166104
Hallums, D P; Gomez, R; Doyle, A P et al. (2016) RAF Kinase Inhibitory Protein Expression and Phosphorylation Profiles in Oral Cancers. Clin Surg 1:
Schmidt, Brian L (2015) The Neurobiology of Cancer Pain. J Oral Maxillofac Surg 73:S132-5
Ono, Kentaro; Ye, Yi; Viet, Chi T et al. (2015) TRPV1 expression level in isolectin B?-positive neurons contributes to mouse strain difference in cutaneous thermal nociceptive sensitivity. J Neurophysiol 113:3345-55
Convertino, Marino; Samoshkin, Alexander; Viet, Chi T et al. (2015) Differential Regulation of 6- and 7-Transmembrane Helix Variants of ?-Opioid Receptor in Response to Morphine Stimulation. PLoS One 10:e0142826
Schmidt, Brian L (2015) What pain tells us about cancer. Pain 156 Suppl 1:S32-4
Samoshkin, Alexander; Convertino, Marino; Viet, Chi T et al. (2015) Structural and functional interactions between six-transmembrane ?-opioid receptors and ?2-adrenoreceptors modulate opioid signaling. Sci Rep 5:18198

Showing the most recent 10 out of 26 publications