Sylvia Suadicani
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY·Neuroscience
Chronic pelvic pain affects millions of people and often comes with two conditions that tend to occur together: interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS), a painful bladder disorder, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a disorder of the gut. Why pain in these organs becomes long-lasting, and why bladder and bowel pain so often travel together, is still poorly understood.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Physiology
Pharmacology
- Topics
chronic pelvic pain
interstitial cystitis
bladder pain syndrome
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Test whether bladder or colon injury enhances signaling between dorsal root ganglia (DRG) sensory neurons and their wrapping satellite glial cells, using established mouse models of direct bladder and colon insult with behavioral, functional and molecular measures.
- Determine whether gap junctions built from connexin 43 (Cx43), channels that directly link neighboring cells, drive pelvic nerve sensitization, using mice with global or cell-specific deletion of Cx43.
- Test whether the P2X7R-Panx1 complex, an ATP-sensing receptor paired with an ATP-releasing channel, increases DRG neuron excitability and pelvic pain, using mice lacking P2X7R or pannexin 1 globally or in specific cell types.
- Examine whether neuron-glia signaling in the DRG lets injury in one pelvic organ sensitize another, explaining colon-bladder cross-sensitization, by comparing pain responses across organs in wildtype and knockout mice.
More about the research
This project asks whether conversations between nerve cells and their support cells, inside the nerve clusters that serve the pelvic organs, help turn short-term pain into chronic pain.
Why it matters
People with interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome and irritable bowel syndrome often live with chronic pelvic pain that current care does not fully explain or relieve. By testing whether gap junctions and the P2X7R-Panx1 complex drive overactive nerve-glia signaling in pelvic sensory ganglia, this work could identify new drug targets for treating pelvic pain and the overlapping bladder and bowel pain these patients experience.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Vijay Samineni
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Neuroscience
Determine whether cystitis causes harmful changes in two spinal cord neuron populations the team found, and test whether changing their activity eases bladder pain and abnormal voiding.
John Archie Pollock
Duquesne University, PA·Neuroscience
Define which RNA splice isoforms of ATF3, an injury-responsive transcription factor, underlie sex differences in pain and pain relief in rat dorsal root ganglia after sciatic nerve constriction.
Holly A. Ingraham
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Neuroscience
Identify the inhibitory neurons in Barrington's nucleus that block urination and defecation, and map their projections to the spinal cord regions controlling the bladder or colon in mice.
The school
Albert Einstein College of Medicine: 21 labs on PI Pages, $361M a year on research, 36 research doctorates a year.
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