Stanford Medicine researchers have successfully replicated a key nervous pathway responsible for sensing pain in a lab dish. This breakthrough could accelerate our understanding of how pain signals are processed in humans, leading to better treatments for chronic pain.
According to Dr. Sergiu Pasca, the lead researcher, the study involved creating an assemblage of four organoids – each representing a different region of the brain’s pain-sensing pathway – which work together to transmit and process pain information. The researchers showed that the assemblage accurately replicated the circuitry of the human brain’s pain-sensing pathway.
The team also demonstrated that certain chemicals, such as capsaicin from hot peppers, can increase the activity in the assemblage, while rare genetic mutations can lead to debilitating hypersensitivity or a life-threatening inability to experience pain. The researchers observed that rendering a specific sodium channel non-functional caused the transmission of pain information to cease.
While the assemblages themselves do not “feel” pain, they transmit signals that require further processing by other centers in the brain for us to experience the unpleasant sensation. Future research aims to accelerate the development of these assemblages to better understand how the pain-sensing pathway works and develop targeted therapies for pain management.
The study was funded by several organizations, including the National Institutes of Health and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The findings have significant implications for understanding neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, which often involve hypersensitivity to pain and sensory stimulation.
Source: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/04/pain-neural-pathway-dish-speed-treatment.html