Gene therapy ‘switch’ may offer non-addictive pain relief
In a preclinical study, Penn Medicine researchers have uncovered a new gene therapy that targets only pain signals while leaving the rest of the brain untouched.
2 min. read
A preclinical study has uncovered a new gene therapy that targets pain centers in the brain while eliminating the risk of addiction from narcotics treatments, a breakthrough which could provide hope for the more than 50 million Americans living with chronic pain.
Dealing with chronic pain can feel like listening to a radio where the volume is stuck at maximum volume, and the noise never seems to dull or lessen. Opioid medications, like morphine, work by turning down the volume, but they also affect other parts of the brain, sometimes leading to dangerous side effects or even addiction.
The potential new gene therapy is akin to a volume knob that only turns down the pain station and leaves everything else untouched, according to research from teams at the Perelman School of Medicine and School of Nursing, along with collaborators at Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University, published in Nature.
“The goal was to reduce pain while lessening or eliminating the risk of addiction and dangerous side effects,” says Gregory Corder, assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Penn. “By targeting the precise brain circuits that morphine acts on, we believe this is a first step in offering new relief for people whose lives are upended by chronic pain.” Corder, along with Kate Townsend Creasy, assistant professor of nutrition science in Penn Nursing’s Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences, are two co-authors of the study.
By imaging brain cells that act as pain trackers, the team uncovered new insight into how morphine eases suffering, with a behavioral platform driven by artificial intelligence that tracks natural behaviors, creates a readout of pain levels, and helps gauge how much treatment is needed to alleviate the pain.
This readout, used similarly to a map, allowed the team to design a targeted gene therapy that mimics morphine’s beneficial effects but avoids its addictive ones while delivering an “off switch” specifically for pain felt in the brain. When activated, this switch provides durable pain relief without affecting normal sensation or triggering reward pathways that can lead to addiction.
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