ISBN 9783843904353

978-3-8439-0435-3, Reihe Biochemie

Christine Andres
Growth factor-induced subgroup specific signaling in nociceptive neurons

129 Seiten, Dissertation Freie Universität Berlin (2012), Hardcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

Pain is a large health and socio-economical problem. While mechanisms of acute pain are relatively well understood, knowledge about the signaling cascades involved in pain sensitization is still scarce. One reason for the lack of knowledge is the absence of appropriate techniques to analyze signaling activation in highly heterogeneous nociceptive neurons. This thesis now provides a sophisticated microscope based single cell analysis package called “Quantitative Automated Microscopy (QuAM)”, including a data evaluation toolkit for analyzing heterogeneous cell populations. Thereby, QuAM allows for subgrouping of nociceptive neurons by their signaling state. One prominent example presented here is the distinct action of different growth factors that activate signaling in a nociceptive subgroup specific manner. However, QuAM provides not only insights about signaling activation, but can be used as easy testing tool itself for drug screening and target validation in pain research.