Assistant Professor, Anesthesiology

B.Sc., Stony Brook University

M.D., Ph.D., Duke University School of Medicine

Chronic pain affects more than 50 million Americans, and current treatments often rely on opioids, which can be addictive and ineffective for many people. The Chamessian Lab is exploring a promising new way to relieve pain using an emerging therapeutic modality called targeted protein degradation (TPD), which eliminates protein targets rather than just blocking them. This project will apply TPD to the voltage-gated sodium channels NaV1.7 and NaV1.8, both of which are key mediators of pain in humans. The proposed work builds on foundational in vitro results from the Chamessian Lab showing for the first time that NaV1.7/8 are amenable to TPD using small molecule effectors called PROTACs. Now, Alexander Chamessian and his team will 1) test the ability of PROTAC-mediated TPD of NaV1.7/8 to produce analgesia in vivo using preclinical animal models, and 2) develop new tools to more selectively direct TPD to pain-generating neurons (nociceptors). Taken together, this work is poised to deliver novel, non-addictive degrader analgesics to bring much needed relief to the millions of people suffering from chronic pain.