Justas Lauzadis

 Advisor: Dr. Michelino Puopolo

Characterizing electrophysiological changes in dorsal root ganglia following spinal cord injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI) affects nearly 300,000 people in the USA, with an estimate of 54 new cases per million people each year. Approximately 80% of these patients will suffer from chronic neuropathic pain (SCI-pain) at regions below the spinal lesion. SCI-pain is often refractory to current therapies which have a modest effect only in a minority of patients.The lack of effective therapeutic interventions for these patients is primarily due to the inability to precisely target the underlying cause. Justas’s work focuses on the underlying ionic mechanism and the ion channel(s) that promote and maintain spontaneous firing of nociceptors. His approach includes electrophysiological recordings from dorsal root ganglion from rodent models of SCI along with behavioral studies on therapeutic effects of pharmacological intervention following injury.  

Ultimately, the identification of the ion channel responsible for driving spontaneous firing of nociceptors will help to identify new rational pharmacological targets for the development of efficacious analgesics to treat chronic pain following SCI.

Recent Publications:

Yong Lu, Maksym Doroshenko, Justas Lauzadis, Martha P. Kanjiya, Mario Rebecchi, Martin Kaczocha, Michelino Puopolo. Presynaptic inhibition of primary nociceptive signals to dorsal horn lamina I neurons by dopamine. Journal of Neuroscience 24 August 2018, 0323-18; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0323-18.2018