Raquel Tonello, Camilla Fusi, Serena Materazzi, Ilaria M Marone, Francesco De Logu, Silvia Benemei, Muryel C Gonçalves, Elisabetta Coppi, Celio J Castro-Junior, Marcus Vinicius Gomez, Pierangelo Geppetti, Juliano Ferreira, Romina Nassini
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Peptides from venomous animals have long been important for understanding pain mechanisms and for the discovery of pain treatments. Here, we hypothesized that Phα1β, a peptide from the venom of the armed spider Phoneutria nigriventer, produces analgesia by blocking the TRPA1 channel. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH: Cultured rat dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, human fetal lung fibroblasts (IMR90) or HEK293 cells expressing the human TRPA1 (hTRPA1-HEK293), human TRPV1 (hTRPV1-HEK293) or human TRPV4 channels (hTRPV4-HEK293), were used for calcium imaging and electrophysiology...
January 2017: British Journal of Pharmacology