Neuroscientist Norbert Weiss, PhD, and his team at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in Prague, in collaboration with Gerald W. Zamponi’s team at the University of Calgary in Canada have discovered a new molecule that can reverse chronic pain.

The study published in the journal Pflügers Archiv – European Journal of Physiology, reveals how a single molecule blocker of calcium channels can alleviate pain in animal models.

Calcium channels are essential in processing pain information in the nervous system as they not only contribute to the genesis of the pain signal but also form gates that open to allow pain messages through to the brain.

Although the implication of calcium channels in the transmission of pain signals has been known for a long time, their therapeutic use for the treatment of pain is rendered complicated because of their diversity.

“Imagine a castle with many doors. If you want to prevent someone to get in you need to close all of these doors. The situation is similar if you want to stop pain by blocking calcium channels”.

To bypass this issue, Norbert Weiss and his team have been looking for molecules with the ability to equally block channel variants.

“What we have found is a master key that can be used to close all these doors at once”, D.Patterson writes for praguemorning.cz.

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