Yatendra Mulpuri
New York University, NY·Neuroscience·Early-career
People with oral cancer often suffer intense, disabling pain set off by pressure or stretching at the tumor site, such as when chewing or talking. Opioid painkillers do not control it well, and why the tissue becomes so sensitive is not fully understood.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Pharmacology
- Topics
oral cancer
cancer pain
orofacial pain
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2030
What they work on
- Develop and validate tests that measure pressure and stretch sensitivity in oral cancer patients, capturing aspects of cancer pain not measured before.
- Test whether deleting TRPV4, a pressure- and stretch-sensitive ion channel, specifically in Schwann cells reduces functional pain in the face and mouth of genetically engineered mice with oral cancer.
- Determine whether Schwann cell TRPV4 drives hyperexcitability of trigeminal sensory neurons caused by pressure and stretch on oral cancer, using genetically engineered mice.
More about the research
Early evidence points to TRPV4 (transient receptor potential vanilloid 4), an ion channel, a pore in the cell membrane that opens in response to pressure and stretch. In oral cancer patients, TRPV4 is found in Schwann cells (SCs), which wrap around the nerve fibers of sensory neurons. In mouse models, blocking TRPV4 in the cancer reduces pain responses to touch in the face and mouth.
Why it matters
Oral cancer pain is severe and poorly controlled by opioids. If TRPV4 in Schwann cells drives pain from pressure and stretch, drugs that block TRPV4 could become a new type of painkiller for oral cancer patients. Better ways to measure these pain types in patients could also help test future treatments.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Aditi Bhattacharya
New York University, NY·Neuroscience
Measure FN1 and its disease-specific variant Fn EDA in oral cancer tissue from patients, using multiplex immunohistochemistry (staining several proteins at once), and test whether their levels track with clinical pain scores and metastasis.
Brian Schmidt
New York University, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether co-delivering OPRM1 DNA, the mu-opioid receptor gene, with knockdown of F2RL1, the gene for protease-activated receptor-2, eliminates cancer-induced pain behavior in mice, using non-viral peptide-lipid and lipopolymer carriers.
Vivian Lee
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Determine the role of NMDA receptors, glutamate-sensing receptors, in corneal nerve maintenance and regeneration by conditionally deleting them in sensory nerves or in Schwann cells, the nerves' support cells, in mice.
The school
New York University: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 540 research doctorates a year.
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