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NPR reports via Health News Florida:
Scientists have re-created a pain pathway in the brain by growing four key clusters of human nerve cells in a dish.
This laboratory model could be used to help explain certain pain syndromes, and offer a new way to test potential analgesic drugs, a Stanford team reports in the journal Nature.
"It's exciting," says Dr. Stephen Waxman, a professor at Yale School of Medicine who was not involved in the recent research.
Currently, prospective pain drugs are typically tested in animals — whose responses are often different than a human's — and in individual nerve cells, which may not reflect the behavior of entire brain networks.
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