During a PRF webinar on March 24, 2020, Ishmail Abdus-Saboor discussed approaches to developing objective “pain scales” in animals by using neurobiology, mathematics, and computational biology. After his talk, there was a question-and-answer period moderated by Cheryl Stucky.
- Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, PhD, University of Pennsylvania, US
- Cheryl Stucky, PhD, Medical College of Wisconsin, US
Listen to the webinar
Here is an abstract of Abdus-Saboor’s talk:
Pain is a subjective, mood altering, and deeply personal sensory experience. As such, articulating the degree of pain one is experiencing is oftentimes quite challenging. In the clinic, questionnaires or pain scales with happy and sad faces are used to gauge pain levels. However, in animal models, how do we actually know if a mouse is experiencing pain? To assess pain in rodents, researchers have traditionally applied sensory stimuli to the rodent paw and tried to infer the animal’s pain state based on the singular readout of whether an animal moved its paw or not. The problem is, animals will lift their paw to both innocuous and noxious stimuli, and with that sole measurement parameter, there is a high likelihood of incorrectly assigning the animal’s sensory experience. In this presentation, I will discuss our approaches to circumvent this problem using neurobiology, mathematics, and computational biology to develop objective “pain scales” in animals.
About the presenter
Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, PhD, received his bachelor’s degree in animal science from North Carolina A&T University in 2006, having completed internships in research labs in academia and industry, as well as a veterinary clinic and a farm. He earned his PhD in cell and molecular biology in 2012 with Meera Sundaram at the University of Pennsylvania studying signal transduction pathways during development of the roundworm C. elegans. His PhD thesis work was supported by the NIH and recognized with the Tom Kadesch Prize in Genetic Research. He completed postdoctoral training with Benjamin Shykind at Cornell studying monoallelic gene expression of olfactory receptors, and with Wenqin Luo at the University of Pennsylvania studying neural circuit mechanisms for somatosensation. As a postdoctoral fellow, he conducted research supported by several grants from the NIH and Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and was recognized with the Mitchell Max Award in Pain Research from the NIH. Ishmail opened his lab at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 as the Mitchell J. Blutt and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Assistant Professor of Biology. In addition to startup funds from the University of Pennsylvania, the Abdus-Saboor lab is currently supported by an R00 Pathway to Independence grant from the NIH.
About the moderator
Cheryl Stucky, PhD, is the Marvin Wagner Endowed Chair at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), Milwaukee, US. She is also director of the Neuroscience Doctoral Program and director of the Pain Division of the Neuroscience Research Center at MCW. Her lab studies the molecular, cellular, and physiological mechanisms of sensation, particularly how we sense touch and pain. She is interested in how skin cells communicate with sensory neurons to convey touch and cold, the causes of severe pain in sickle cell disease, migraine pain, and the causes of neuropathic and inflammatory pain.
Want some background reading for the webinar? See the papers under Related Content in the right column of this page. Also visit the Abdus-Saboor lab website.
Join the conversation about the webinar on Twitter @PainResForum #PRFWebinar
See previous PRF webinars here.