Virginia Tech Unlocks Way to Reverse Chronic Pain in Mice

More than 50 million Americans live with chronic pain that refuses to quit, and three-quarters of them get little relief from existing medications. Now researchers at Virginia Tech have discovered a way to switch off that pain in mice by targeting a previously overlooked biological pathway.

Neuroscientist Ann Gregus and her team focused on nociplastic pain, the stubborn kind that includes fibromyalgia, chronic lower back pain, and some migraines. Unlike pain from an injury you can see, this type stems from changes in how the nervous system processes signals, making it notoriously hard to treat.

The breakthrough came partly by accident. When pandemic supply shortages forced the lab to work with a different strain of female mice, the animals developed persistent pain behaviors that closely mimicked human chronic pain conditions. It was exactly what the team needed to test their theory.

The researchers triggered pain in the mice, waited for it to become established, then treated them with compounds that block specific enzymes in the spinal cord. The results startled even the scientists: pain hypersensitivity vanished, and the mice regained normal grip strength.

"Chronic pain patients are often told pain is all in their heads and they just have to learn how to tolerate it," Gregus said. "But what we're showing is that there is a clear biological mechanism, and one we can target."

Why This Inspires

One of the tested compounds is already in Phase II clinical trials for another disease, meaning it has human safety data that could fast-track pain trials. That's rare in drug development and could shorten the wait for patients desperately seeking relief.

Gregus brings personal stakes to her work. She lives with migraines and peripheral neuropathy herself, giving her an unfiltered understanding of how current treatments fail. "I know what it's like to live with pain every day and be told there's nothing else that can be done," she said.

The lab's next step involves testing the approach on conditions like chemotherapy-induced nerve pain and diabetic neuropathy, which affect millions worldwide. Unlike opioids, which carry risks of addiction, or anti-inflammatories, which only work for certain pain types, this approach targets the root cause rather than masking symptoms.

The discovery published in PAIN represents something patients rarely get: a genuinely new path forward after decades of limited options. For people whose pain has defied every treatment, that possibility alone is worth celebrating.