Imagine a life where stubbing your toe doesn’t send you into a world of pain, or where an incessant itch disrupts your daily routine with no clear cause. For some individuals, these extremes are a reality, rooted in mutations of a single protein: the sodium channel NaV1.9.

NaV1.9 acts like a "volume control" for our pain and itch sensations, residing in sensory nerve cells. However, its mysterious nature left scientists stumped for years due to the challenges of studying it in a lab setting.

Groundbreaking Research Unveils Secrets of NaV1.9

A groundbreaking study published in Science Advances, led by Professor Frank Bosmans from the Experimental Pharmacology Research Group at VUB, has cracked this enigma. His research team has successfully established a reliable method to express NaV1.9 in a controlled laboratory environment for the very first time.

"For fifteen years, researchers struggled to express NaV1.9 reliably," reveals Bosmans. "Now, we have developed a method that allows for precise functional assessments of this channel."

A Leap Towards Personalized Medicine