Pharmacological, surgical, psychological, and alternative medicine approaches for the treatment of chronic pain, including neuropathic pain, provide only partial relief for most patients, with the efficacy of existing medications often blunted by dose-limiting side effects arising from drug actions on cells outside the pain-signaling axis. The development of more effective treatments for pain--particularly chronic pain states such as neuropathic pain--has been hampered by lack of predictive animal models and biomarkers, variation in pain characteristics between patients or on a day-to-day basis for single patients, patient stratification on the basis of symptoms rather than mechanism, and a high rate of placebo responses. We discuss genetic and genomic approaches to translational pain research. We review examples of the identification and validation of human pain targets through rodent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and global mRNA expression studies, functional screening in flies and mice, human GWAS and whole-exome sequencing studies, and the targeted candidate gene approach. These and other emerging genetic and genomic strategies are likely to facilitate the development of new, more effective pain therapeutics.
Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.