Peter A Smith

Biography

Peter A Smith is a professor belongs to the department of Pharmacology from the university of Alberta.

Research Interest

My laboratory is interested in understanding and developing new treatments for chronic 'neuropathic' pain. Acute tissue injury produces 'nociceptive' pain. Because it promotes avoidance of tissue damage, this unpleasant, yet vital physiological response ensures an individual's survival . By contrast, 'neuropathic' pain induced by injury to, or disease of, the nervous system is a major health problem. Because it persists for months or years after any injury has healed, neuropathic pain serves no obvious biological purpose. It is associated with diabetic, postherpetic and HIV-related neuropathies, as well as with traumatic nerve, brain or spinal cord injury. The prevalence of neuropathic pain has been estimated at 1.5% within the general population. This would mean about 100,000,000 people worldwide! Standard pharmacological interventions include opioids, ketamine, amitryptyline, gabapentin, pregabalin or other anticonvulsants. All too frequently however, these drugs display limited effectiveness or dose-limiting side effects that range from sedation and dizziness to psychosis and hallucinations. In my laboratory, we try to meet the urgent need for new therapies by understanding the long-term electrophysiological changes that occur in sensory and spinal nerves when they are damaged. This involves altered responsiveness to analgesic and other drugs as well as alterations in ion channel properties and neurotransmitter actions. Experiments are done using whole-cell patch clamp recordings from the cell bodies of sensory nerves in rat dorsal root ganglia as well as `slice-patch' recordings from the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. The latter are complimented using confocal Ca2+ imaging experiments in collaboration with Dr. Klaus Ballanyi (Department of Physiology) and behavioural and biochemical studies in collaboration with Drs. Bradley Kerr (Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine) and Elena Posse de Chaves (Pharmacology).