Editorial

Molecular pain, a new era of pain research and medicine

Jianguo Gu¹ , Min Zhuo² , Michael Caterina³ , Amy B MacDermott⁴ , Annika Malmberg⁵ , Volker Neugebauer⁶ and Megumu Yoshimura⁷

¹  Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, McKnight Brain Institute and College of Dentistry, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32610, USA

²  Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A8, Canada

³  Department of Biological Chemistry, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA

⁴  Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University, 630 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032, USA

⁵  Elan Pharmaceuticals, 800 Gateway Boulevard, San Francisco, CA 94080, USA

⁶  Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology, The University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd. RT 1069, Galveston, TX 77555-1069, USA

⁷  Department of Integrative Physiology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Maidashi 3-1-1, Higashiku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan

author email corresponding author email

Molecular Pain 2005, 1:1doi:10.1186/1744-8069-1-1

Published:	14 January 2005

Abstract

Molecular pain is a relatively new and rapidly expanding research field that represents an advanced step from conventional pain research. Molecular pain research addresses physiological and pathological pain at the cellular, subcellular and molecular levels. These studies integrate pain research with molecular biology, genomics, proteomics, modern electrophysiology and neurobiology. The field of molecular pain research has been rapidly expanding in the recent years, and has great promise for the identification of highly specific and effective targets for the treatment of intractable pain. Although several existing journals publish articles on classical pain research, none are specifically dedicated to molecular pain research. Therefore, a new journal focused on molecular pain research is needed. Molecular Pain, an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal, will provide a forum for molecular pain scientists to communicate their research findings in a targeted manner to others in this important and growing field.