One in five people worldwide suffers from chronic inflammatory pain. Meanwhile, about two thirds of those affected find little relief from existing pain medications; new therapeutic approaches are urgently needed. “We first must understand precisely how sensory nerve cells trigger pain at the molecular level—in other words, which proteins are involved,” says Professor Gary Lewin, Group Leader of the Molecular Physiology of Somatosensory Perception lab at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin.

To unravel these molecular processes, Lewin—who has been studying pain for four decades and recently discovered a previously unknown ion channel involved in pain perception—is working closely with systems biologist Dr. Fabian Coscia, Group Leader of the Spatial Proteomics lab at the same center. Coscia co-developed a method called Deep Visual Proteomics that makes it possible to determine the proteome —the complete set of proteins—of specific cells and to create maps detailing the spatial locations of individual proteins.

The researchers combined this technology with electrophysiological methods from Lewin’s group. This enabled them to first identify specific subtypes of pain neurons based on their function and then analyze their protein profiles. The result is a high-resolution molecular map of these nerve cells, which has been published in Nature Communications. The team also demonstrated how the technology can identify potential new drug targets to treat chronic pain.