Ellen
Staedtler , MD PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, IRP
301-594-1594
Dr. Ellen Staedtler is a physician scientist who studies somatosensory neurons in human tissue with methods of molecular biology, the function of those neurons in a patient population with a localized peripheral neuropathy, and intends to improve this neuropathic pain condition via an investigational new drug.
PhD, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Faculty of Medicine, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany
MD, Faculty of Medicine, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany
As a trained Anesthesiologist, Dr. Staedtler could observe the detrimental effects of pain on people’s recovery from acute injuries and illness. This experience was a motivator for her to join the Department of Perioperative Medicine on its mission to understand the fundamental physiology of pain and implement this knowledge into successful pain treatments.
The research scientists are studying pain where it begins: the nociceptive somatosensory afferent. Tissue samples from human donors give research scientists the opportunity to phenotype nociceptors for their expression of nociceptive and analgesic markers. A vast body of knowledge based on basic molecular and physiological research in rodents has not met the expectations to be a basis for successful pain drug development. Thus, a deeper understanding of human nociceptors is needed in order to guide efforts for future drug development and fill the translational gap to preclinical research.
The research scientists are particularly interested in the receptor TRPV1 and its co-localization with other molecular markers. TRPV1 is an unselective cation channel fundamentally involved in heat sensation as well as inflammatory and neuropathic pain and widely expressed in nociceptors.
On the clinical level, they have gained approval to start a clinical trial to treat neuropathic pain from Morton’s neuroma with a local injection of resiniferatoxin (RTX). RTX is a highly potent TRPV1 agonist that leads to long-term excitotoxic inactivation of nociceptive axonal fibers, thereby interrupting the transmission of maladaptive peripheral input into the central nervous system.
To have a detailed understanding of the symptom profile of this patient population, they are enrolling patients into a Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST) protocol in a collaboration with the Pain Research Center at NIH. Detailed characterization of positive and negative symptoms of patients with Morton’s neuroma prior and after RTX injection will provide additional safety and efficacy information for the clinical trial.
- Postgraduate fellowship, Max Planck Society
- Graduated with distinction (summa cum laude), Faculty of Medicine, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany
Pipa G, Staedtler ES, Rodriguez EF, Waltz JA, Muckli LF, Singer W, Waltz JA, Goebel R & Munk MHJ ; Performance- and coding-dependent oscillations in monkey prefrontal cortex during short-term memory.; Front Integr Neurosci. 2009 Oct 7;3:25
Wu W, Wheeler DW, Staedtler ES, Munk MHJ & Pipa G; Behavioral performance modulates spike-field-coherence in monkey prefrontal cortex.; Neuroreport. 2008 Jan 22;19(2):235-8
Lazar A, Muresan R, Staedtler E, Munk MHJ & Pipa G ; Importance of electrophysiological signal features assessed by classification trees.; Neurocomputing 2007, 10-12, 2017-2021