Unpublished

Collaborators: Simon Downes Toney, Jake Kothandaraman, Ishmail Abdus-Saboor

The brain receives vital sensory information from internal organs within our bodies and regulates critical autonomic functions such as breathing. The lung is extensively innervated by sensory neurons, whose cell bodies are primarily located in the vagal ganglia, with a smaller number residing in the thoracic dorsal root ganglia. Lung cancer patients display an array of behavioral alterations, traditionally regulated by the nervous system, with pain being the most common one. Using mouse models of lung cancer, systems neuroscience approaches and computational tools for behavioral quantification, we are investigating how signals from the tumor microenvironment dysregulate interoceptive signals from the lung to the brain driving cancer-induced visceral pain.