An analgesic peptide H-20 attenuates chronic pain via the PD-1 pathway with few adverse effects

The lack of effective and safe analgesics to treat chronic pain is a health problem that diminish the life quality of people who suffers this illness.

Previous data has shown that PD-1 activation produces a regulation of the activity of sensorial neurons and constitute a promising target to pain treatment.

In this work, the researchers performed a high-throughput screening to find the peptide H-20, which interacts with PD-1 with high affinity.  Also, it was shown that H-20/PD-1 interaction diminished the activity of nociceptive neurons and produce analgesic effects with less secondary effects that opioid drugs.

These findings reveal that H-20 is a promising candidate to develop new analgesic therapies against chronic pain.

Authors

Long Zhao, Hao Luo, Yu Ma, Shengze Zhu, Yongjiang Wu, Muxing Lu, Xiaojun Yao, Xin Liu and Gang Chen.