News & Media
August 2024: James (Jim) Nichols, D.V.M., Ph.D., a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Shepherd Lab, was awarded a K99/R00 Career Transition Award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to study the effects of dysregulated insulin signaling on neuropathic pain in diabetes. The award, part of the HEAL Initiative Pathway to Independence Program, provides up to 2 years of training at MD Anderson and 3 years of funding for his transition to a professorship.
Dr. Nichols' mentorship team includes Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Peter Grace, Dr. Robert Dantzer, and Dr. Carmen Dessauer from the McGovern Medical School.
August 2024: Seven members from the Department of Symptom Research attended the 2024 World Congress on Pain in Amsterdam, August 5-9. This meeting brought together more than 6,500 scientists, clinicians, and health care providers from around the world and across pain disciplines. The Symptom Research group was featured across three workshop sessions and six poster presentations. Shepherd Lab contributors included:
- Andrew Shepherd, Ph.D., Principal Investigator:
- Neuroimmune Mechanisms Underlying Initiation and Resolution of Neuropathic Pain: Unconventional Cell
- Caitlyn Gaffney, Research Investigator:
- Drivers of Subclinical Paraneoplastic Neuropathy in a Mouse Model of Colorectal Cancer
- Targeting STAT3 Signaling to Promote Recovery from Neuropathic Pain
June 2024: Andrew Shepherd, Ph.D., was awarded the Cyrus Scholar prize in basic science during the MD Anderson Division of Internal Medicine research retreat. The award recognizes his team's research into a new drug, TTI-101, for resolving pain related to nerve injury. The award comes with a $15,000, 3-year stipend to support the work.
Angela Casaril, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist in the Shepherd Lab, presented the poster for this research and won third place in the basic science poster competition.
Dr. Shepherd explained, "Our research focuses on understanding how TTI-101, an inhibitor of STAT3, is able to provide long-lasting pain relief in mouse models of nerve injury pain. This is vital because we are in desperate need of more effective analgesic options for patients suffering with neuropathy due to invasive surgery or chemotherapy. We’re currently running transcriptomic analysis of injured mouse nerves after TTI-101 treatment to generate an unbiased overview of the gene expression changes after STAT3 inhibition, with the goal being to validate these findings in other animal models before advancing into human studies."
June 2024: Andrew Shepherd, Ph.D., was awarded an R01 grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). The award is titled, "Angiotensin signaling underlies myeloid and sensory disruption in diabetes." The overall goal of the project is to determine how inflammation-driven infiltration of peripheral nerves by macrophages leads to neuropathy and pain.
The total cost of support for all 4 years is $2.2 million.