By Jason Glynn

This is a two-part installment of my experience while working in a neuroscience lab at the University of New England under a Maine-INBRE Fellowship.

Part 1: July, 2014

This summer some people will play with camping gear, others may play with fireworks; but me – I will play with brains. I am one of the Maine INBRE (IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence) fellowship winners for this year. This competitive fellowship is a NIH (National Institute of Health) – funded initiative designed to foster collaboration and train students in Maine’s biotech industry.

Their goals are achieved through a paid 10-week stint at a Maine-based biomedical research center of the winner’s choice. I actually got to interview numerous doctors and professors from a couple different places to find out who I wanted to work with – this was very cool. Some of my colleagues were awarded a similar fellowship with the caveat of being stationed at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory up in Bar Harbor. The Acadia Park region is a beautiful place, especially during summertime, but unfortunately I have commitments down so I looked closer to home.

I interviewed about 10 PhDs and MDs from the Maine Medical Center Research Institute and the University of New England to learn what research they were conducting, check out their respective labs, and find out where I’d fit in for the summer.

I am an aspiring neuroscientist so I obviously wanted to do something that involved the brain. I am more into abstract topical things like perception and cognition – or cognitive neuroscience – but for the purposes of this fellowship I had to find something on a smaller – more molecular scale. As for the neurosciences, there are a few universities in Maine with strong programs, but UNE (University of New England) is closest to me. Plus, if I do stay in Maine for further education there is a good chance I will at least apply to UNE, so I saw this opportunity as an excellent foot in the door.

Making the choice easier was the fact that UNE is a leading pain research facility. We are constantly looking for newer and better treatments for pain, but first we must better understand the underlying biological systems involved. This issue is particularly close to me because I have been a chronic pain sufferer since I was 20. A little over 10 years ago I was in a traumatic car accident, and this forever altered my life, and my tolerance for pain.

After interviewing 8 doctors here, I found my match. I have chosen Dr. Tamara King to work under this summer. She is an exceptionally intelligent and accomplished doctor. Her main focus of research includes cancer-associated bone pain and neuropathic (nervous system) pain caused by advanced osteoarthritis (OA).

I will be looking into how exercise reduces neuropathic pain in an advanced OA rat model. Osteoarthritis is a severe degenerative joint disease that affects nearly 27 million Americans which serves to restrict most patients’ quality of life. We all know exercise has tons of positive physiological benefits, but the biological mechanisms by which exercise acts on alleviating pain

Rat models are often used in science because they less people care, or at least understand, if they’re used for research and many of our biological systems are similar. They are also very well studied so we can genetically control many variables. You can now order any of over 600 types of genetically altered rats for whatever research you are conducting.

We used Sprague-Dawly male rats for this study. We inject them with monosodium iodoacetate (MiA) into their left-knee. This degrades the cartilage in their joint in a manner consistent with osteoarthritis. Harsh, I know. We then forced them to exercise on a tiny treadmill; I say ‘forced’ because they would receive a slight shock if they didn’t run. Harsh, again, I’m sorry, but this is science.

For those bleeding hearts out there, all experiments were conducted under Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) supervision, and keep in mind that this is in a pain lab….so everything possible is done to not cause extra pain, as it could skew the data. Stay tuned for part two!