Grant: DRA : Canada Graduate Research Scholarship - Doctoral Program (CGRS D)

Opioid based painkillers are still regularly utilized in medicine due to a lack of less addictive alternatives. However, opioid addiction has fuelled a crisis which has claimed the lives of over 52,000 Canadians in the past decade, urging research into safer alternatives. To move beyond the need for opioids, we need to understand how the proteins that communicate sensory signals between the body and the brain function. These proteins are quite difficult to study, yet are of interest to scientists since rare mutations in them have been found in individuals who can't feel pain. Since these proteins are not located in the brain, therapeutics that target them won't interact with the brain's reward centre and, thus, won't cause addiction. However, a better understanding of the protein is necessary to move forward with any future drug design. Because these proteins are too small to be seen with a regular microscope, we employ a powerful emerging technique called cryogenic electron microscopy, which will enable us to explore this protein at a near-atomic level. In addition, we will use patch-clamp electrophysiology, a method which allows us to measure the electricity flowing through these proteins and see how it is altered by pain-causing animal toxins. Together, these two approaches will provide us with information about both the structure and the function of this protein. We hope that this work will establish a foundation allowing for the subsequent design of non-opioid pain killers that target this protein, providing pain relief without addiction.