Summary: The enzyme Tiam1 in dorsal horn excitatory neurons of the spinal cord is responsible for initiating and maintaining neuropathic pain. Targeting spinal Tiam1 with anti-sense oligonucleotides injected into the cerebrospinal fluid effectively alleviates pain hypersensitivity.
Neuropathic pain is often poorly managed and has a significant negative impact on quality of life. The study highlights the importance of understanding the mechanisms underlying neuropathic pain in developing effective treatments.
Key Facts:
- A mechanism involving the enzyme Tiam1 in dorsal horn excitatory neurons of the spinal cord initiates and maintains neuropathic pain.
- Targeting spinal Tiam1 with anti-sense oligonucleotides injected into the cerebrospinal fluid effectively alleviated neuropathic pain hypersensitivity in mouse models.
- Poorly managed neuropathic pain affects approximately 3% to 17% of adults and is associated with impaired quality of life.
Source: University of Alabama
Neuropathic pain — abnormal hypersensitivity to stimuli — is associated with impaired quality of life and is often poorly managed.
Estimates suggest that 3 percent to 17 percent of adults suffer from neuropathic pain, including a quarter of people with diabetes and a third of people with HIV.
In a paper published in the journal Neuron, researchers report that a mechanism involving the enzyme Tiam1 in dorsal horn excitatory neurons of the spinal cord both initiates and maintains neuropathic pain.
Moreover, they show that targeting spinal Tiam1 with anti-sense oligonucleotides injected into the cerebrospinal fluid effectively alleviated neuropathic pain hypersensitivity.
“Thus, our study has uncovered a pathophysiological mechanism that initiates, transitions and sustains neuropathic pain, and we have identified a promising therapeutic target for treating neuropathic pain with long-lasting consequences,” said Lingyong Li, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine.
“Understanding the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying neuropathic pain is critical for developing new therapeutic strategies to treat chronic pain effectively.”
Li and Kimberley Tolias, Ph.D., a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, were co-leaders of the research.
It was known that one feature of neuropathic pain is maladaptive changes in neurons of the spinal dorsal horn — increases in the size and density of dendritic spines, the primary postsynaptic sites of excitatory synapses.
However, the mechanisms driving this synaptic plasticity were unclear. Dendrites are tree-like appendages attached to the body of a neuron that receive communications from other neurons. The spinal dorsal horn is one of the three gray columns of the spinal cord.
In related work, Li and Tolias last year found that chronic pain in a mouse model leads to an activated Tiam1 in anterior cingulate cortex pyramidal neurons of the brain, resulting in an increased number of spines on the neural dendrites.
This higher spine density increased the number of connections, and the strength of those connections, between neurons, a change known as synaptic plasticity. Those increases caused hypersensitivity and were associated with chronic pain-related depression in the mouse model.
The current neuropathic pain study by Li and Tolias used mouse models of neuropathic pain caused by nerve injury, chemotherapy or diabetes. The researchers showed that Tiam1 is activated in the spinal dorsal horn of mice subjected to neuropathic pain and that global knockout of Tiam1 in mice prevented the development of neuropathic pain. Global knockout causes no other apparent abnormalities in the mice.
The UAB and Baylor researchers found that Tiam1 expression in the spinal dorsal horn neurons — but not in the dorsal root ganglion neurons or excitatory forebrain neurons — was essential for the development of neuropathic pain. Furthermore, they found that neuropathic pain development depended on Tiam1 expression in excitatory neurons — not in inhibitory neurons.
After showing where Tiam1 acts in neuropathic pain, Li, Tolias and colleagues showed what Tiam1 does. Tiam1 is known to modulate the activity of other proteins that help build or unbuild the cytoskeletons of cells, and the building of cytoskeleton actin filaments is part of dendritic spine creation.
The researchers found that Tiam1 is necessary during the development of neuropathic pain to increase the density of dendritic spines on wide dynamic range neurons from the spinal dorsal horn and to increase synaptic NMDA receptor activity of spinal dorsal horn neurons.
Tiam1 functions to activate the small GTPase Rac1 enzyme that promotes actin polymerization. The researchers showed that the development of Tiam1-mediated neuropathic pain was dependent on Tiam1-Rac1 signaling.
They then used a small molecule inhibitor to block Rac1 activation at three different time points — right after peripheral nerve injury, four days after nerve injury when neuropathic pain hypersensitivity gradually develops, or three weeks after nerve injury when chronic neuropathic pain is fully established.
They found that neuropathic pain was prevented or reversed at each time point. Thus, Tiam1-Rac1 signaling is essential for the initiation, transition and maintenance of neuropathic pain.
Since Tiam1 appeared to be a promising therapeutic target for treating neuropathic pain, Li and Tolias also tested whether they could reduce neuropathic pain by injecting antisense oligonucleotides, or ASOs — short, synthetic, single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotides designed to alter Tiam1 expression by modulating its mRNA processing or degradation — into the cerebrospinal fluid of the spine.
In a rat model, they found that injecting an ASO against Tiam1 decreased Tiam1 protein levels in the spinal dorsal horn by 50 percent and significantly reduced neuropathic pain hypersensitivity one week after injection, a reduction that lasted another two weeks.
Therefore, Tiam1 is an essential player in the pathogenesis of neuropathic pain that coordinates actin cytoskeletal dynamics, dendritic spine morphogenesis and synaptic receptor function in spinal dorsal horn excitatory neurons in response to nerve damage, Li and Tolias say.
The two researchers are corresponding authors of the study, “Tiam1 coordinates synaptic structural and functional plasticity underpinning the pathophysiology of neuropathic pain.”
Co-authors are Qin Ru, Yungang Lu, Xing Fang and Ali Bin Saifullah, Baylor College of Medicine; Guanxing Chen, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas; and Changqun Yao, UAB Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine.
Funding: Support came from the United States Department of Defense grant W81XWH-20-10790, the Mission Connect/TIRR Foundation, and National Institutes of Health grants NS062829 and NS124141.
About this pain research news
Author: Jeffrey Hansen
Source: University of Alabama
Contact: Jeffrey Hansen – University of Alabama
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Tiam1 coordinates synaptic structural and functional plasticity underpinning the pathophysiology of neuropathic pain” by Lingyong Li. Neuron
Abstract
Tiam1 coordinates synaptic structural and functional plasticity underpinning the pathophysiology of neuropathic pain
Highlights
- Tiam1 in spinal excitatory neurons determines the development of neuropathic pain
- Tiam1 coordinates synaptic structural and functional plasticity in neuropathic pain
- Tiam1-Rac1 signaling initiates, transits, and sustains neuropathic pain
- ASO targeting spinal Tiam1 alleviate neuropathic pain sensitivity
Summary
Neuropathic pain is a common, debilitating chronic pain condition caused by damage or a disease affecting the somatosensory nervous system. Understanding the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying neuropathic pain is critical for developing new therapeutic strategies to treat chronic pain effectively.
Tiam1 is a Rac1 guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) that promotes dendritic and synaptic growth during hippocampal development by inducing actin cytoskeletal remodeling.
Here, using multiple neuropathic pain animal models, we show that Tiam1 coordinates synaptic structural and functional plasticity in the spinal dorsal horn via actin cytoskeleton reorganization and synaptic NMDAR stabilization and that these actions are essential for the initiation, transition, and maintenance of neuropathic pain. Furthermore, an antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) targeting spinal Tiam1 persistently alleviate neuropathic pain sensitivity.
Our findings suggest that Tiam1-coordinated synaptic functional and structural plasticity underlies the pathophysiology of neuropathic pain and that intervention of Tiam1-mediated maladaptive synaptic plasticity has long-lasting consequences in neuropathic pain management.
