A V HILL LECTURE Pain: Why does it exist, how does it work and how can we more effectively treat it?

Mon 11 November 2024

Department of Chemistry

The A V Hill Lecture by Professor Ewan St John Smith, Professor of Nociception, Deputy Head of Department, Department of Pharmacology, Univesity of Cambridge

The third talk in a series of lectures organised by the Cambridge Philosophical Society in the Michaelmas Term 2024.

Abstract: The sensation of pain is one which nearly everyone is familiar with, usually being considered an unpleasant experience. Wouldn’t a life without pain be better? Drawing on human genetics and the wider animal kingdom, we shall see that there are in fact benefits to pain, or rather nociception, the neural process encoding noxious stimuli. Pain is not however static. For example, following an accident, the injured part of the body becomes more sensitive, a phenomenon that usually resolves as the injury heals. Understanding the molecular processes by which pain functions and how the sensitivity in the system changes under different conditions is important for the development of novel therapeutics to treat the chronic pain, such as that associated with osteoarthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, endometriosis, and a wealth of other conditions. Looking to potential new therapeutic avenues, we will discuss what can be learned from studying human genetics and extremophile organisms, such as the naked mole-rat, as well what the future holds regard gene- and cell-based therapy.

Cost: Free