{"id":48248,"date":"2018-07-09T14:57:57","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T18:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=48248"},"modified":"2025-09-30T11:32:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:32:40","slug":"hurt-blocker-chronic-pain","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/hurt-blocker-chronic-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hurt Blocker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n The Hurt Blocker\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Mike Hildebrand<\/a> fell asleep on the job once, in the parking lot of The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Civic Campus. It\u2019s understandable, considering the demands of his research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hildebrand, a Neuroscience<\/a> professor at Carleton, is trying to figure out, with the help of some graduate students, what\u2019s happening in the spinal cord to perpetuate chronic pain, a scourge that impacts as many as one in five people, mostly older adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For nearly 10 years, Hildebrand used spinal cord tissue from rats to record electrical signals travelling between neurons and study the molecules, present or absent, that control the delivery of pain signals to the brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Like her Carleton collaborator Mike Hildebrand, Ottawa Hospital neurosurgeon and researcher Dr. Eve Tsai is focused on fixing devastating health disorders.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But thanks to a unique collaboration with Dr. Eve Tsai<\/a>, a neurosurgeon and researcher at The Ottawa Hospital, Hildebrand\u2019s team is now capturing recordings from spinal cord neuron synapses using human tissue, something they believe has never been done before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so exciting, and I never really pictured it,\u201d Hildebrand says about being the first in the world to attempt this experimental technique.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cI had more modest ambitions, I\u2019d say, for my research. I thought, \u2018I\u2019ll have my niche and I\u2019ll have a few students and we\u2019ll answer some questions.\u2019 It\u2019s cool to see what new doors continue to open.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The tissue that forms the basis of this groundbreaking research comes from human organ donors. Most research on human tissue, other than biopsies, involves potentially diseased tissue or takes place significantly after death. For neurons, that means the signalling pathways would be irreparably degraded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t aware of research where you take viable healthy tissue,\u201d says Hildebrand. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes this so unique.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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On Duty After Dark<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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The fact that somebody has to die for them to conduct their work is not lost on Hildebrand and his students. They treat their work seriously: someone is on call 24 hours a day to respond to the hospital and receive the tissue in the event that an organ donor manifests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as with any hospital procedure, there can be delays, which is why Hildebrand was dozing in his car in the parking lot, waiting for word from the surgical team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A father of three young children, Hildebrand confesses that was during the early days of this project; now it\u2019s his students who are on duty after dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Eve Tsai (middle) with PhD student Annemarie Dedek and Neuroscience professor Mike Hildebrand.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On deck are master\u2019s student Chaya Kandegedara and PhD student Annemarie Dedek<\/a>. They receive the tissue in the operating room and then divide it up for Kandegedara\u2019s biochemical experiments and Dedek\u2019s electrical recordings. Her specialized recording setup measures currents from individual synapses between neurons and plots the results onto a squiggly graph.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWhen I had it running for the first time at Carleton, I was calling colleagues over and saying, \u2018Look at the screen!\u2019 And it\u2019s just a little blip,\u201d says Hildebrand, describing his initial electrical recordings on rodent tissue with the verbal velocity and fervour of a child at a waterpark. \u201cI\u2019m always amazed. I never get bored of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If Hildebrand and his students succeed in identifying what\u2019s causing pain signals to keep firing, or what\u2019s missing that usually blocks those signals, that could prompt pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs that could relieve people of debilitating daily pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hildebrand thinks that\u2019s worth pursuing, and he\u2019s not alone. He and Tsai, in conjunction with two other labs, recently received a five- year $573,750 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to continue their work.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Pain Signalling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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We have all felt pain. If you fall while skating on the frozen Rideau Canal and bang your knee, sensory impulses travel along neural pathways in your leg to your spinal cord, where they are first organized, and then new impulses relay that information to the brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brain then analyzes the input and reacts, so that you \u201cfeel\u201d pain and know that you\u2019re injured. Pain signalling, which happens within a second or two, helps keep you alive by telling you something\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for some people, pain continues when it shouldn\u2019t \u2014 long after a wound has healed, for instance, or a limb amputated \u2014 because of increased electrical impulses travelling to the brain or even impulses without sensory input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hildebrand believes we can understand pain better by studying the spine and chemically targeting damaged areas where signals are first organized and relayed. Although spinal pain signalling research has been underway for a couple decades, nobody is doing the same type of work \u2014 nor to the same extent \u2014 as he and his collaborators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while their project may offer tremendous hope for chronic pain sufferers, the truth is, Hildebrand might never have studied spinal cord neurons were it not for a stroke of bad luck.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“We have all felt pain”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Both Hildebrand and his wife Sara applied to teacher\u2019s college after finishing undergraduate degrees in their hometown of Vancouver years ago. She got in; he did not. Disappointed and somewhat adrift, he took a year off to gain perspective and figure out what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After some soul searching, he entered graduate school at the University of British Columbia and fell in love with scientific research \u2014 in particular, molecular and cellular neuroscience. His PhD supervisor Terry Snutch owned a small pharmaceutical company, so after graduating Hildebrand went to work for him, studying how chemical blockers affect the pain signalling of spinal neurons in rodents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then got a job as a research fellow at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, refining his research focus and mastering use of the electrophysiology recording equipment. Then, just shy of five years ago, he landed a position at Carleton that allowed him to continue his research and also teach and mentor students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a dream job. Getting students excited about new material, showing them why it\u2019s relevant, and seeing them meet their own challenges and excelling, is beyond rewarding, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, Hildebrand teaches a third-year Neuroscience<\/a> course and a fourth-year seminar. He also supervises five graduate students, including Dedek and Kandegedara, who are directly involved in the chronic pain research.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Bridging the Gap Between
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Tsai, Hildebrand\u2019s main collaborator, also has two jobs rolled into one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She is a neurosurgeon and researcher \u2014 an uncommon hybrid which involves performing brain and spinal cord surgeries at the hospital and also leading a lab at The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute<\/a>. She and her lab colleagues are among the world\u2019s leaders in efforts to repair and regenerate neurons in people with spinal cord injuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tsai\u2019s windowless office in the hospital\u2019s Neuroscience Department is crowded floor-to-ceiling with stacks of paper, medical degrees, certificates of expertise, trophies and other awards, and precariously piled books such as Neurosurgery: Tricks of the Trade<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a stark contrast to Hildebrand\u2019s newly occupied office in Carleton\u2019s Health Sciences Building, which was practically empty back in January, save for a jelly belly dispenser (his favourite treat) and a few family photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tsai calls herself a translator \u2014 she understands the needs and challenges of both clinical neurosurgery and neuroscience research and can maximize outcomes on both sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tsai, who got into the University of Toronto\u2019s medical school at age 19 with only two years of undergraduate work completed, and then did her residency while she was earning a PhD, does research for one reason: to improve treatment for her patients. Which is probably why she and Hildebrand get along so well. Both want their lab work to focus on fixing devastating health disorders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hildebrand\u2019s work identifying the mechanisms of pain processing in the spinal cord is particularly significant, says Tsai, because it helps to bridge the gap between research and clinical trials. Most pharmaceutical clinical trials occur after a long period of research, usually on animal tissue. But what works in animals doesn\u2019t always work for humans.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Clinical Trials for Chronic Pain Therapies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Hildebrand, who\u2019s now proving that at least some results from animal testing are applicable to humans, is helping to accelerate progress toward clinical trials for chronic pain therapies, Tsai says, and also helping to inform her own research into the human spinal cord and related research around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hildebrand has lab space at The Ottawa Hospital, thanks to Tsai\u2019s support, so their teams can co-ordinate receipt of donor tissue and share space and data. Tsai and Hildebrand also meet regularly to talk about their work, she says, to their mutual benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow that we have gotten them this tissue, they are able to work out techniques that really have not been developed well because the reality is, we have not had access to this tissue before. So now we can start to study things that we have not really studied before, and see whether we can apply them to patients,\u201d says Tsai, praising Hildebrand for his drive and enthusiasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou cannot really succeed as an individual. You have to have all the stars align around you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s another area where Hildebrand and Tsai agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of what we\u2019re doing is built on the foundational work of lots of others,\u201d he says. \u201cCanada is a world leader in pain research. A lot of the biggest names in pain research are Canadian. I\u2019m really blessed at having come from that training and exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Hildebrand fell asleep on the job once, in the parking lot of The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Civic Campus. It\u2019s understandable, considering the demands of his research. Hildebrand, a Neuroscience professor at Carleton, is trying to figure out, with the help of some graduate students, what\u2019s happening in the spinal cord to perpetuate chronic pain, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":48282,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[54,13],"cu_story_tag":[1919],"class_list":["post-48248","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-health-wellness","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-science"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/48248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/48248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98123,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/48248\/revisions\/98123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=48248"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=48248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}