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2014
September
Research Profile: Understanding back pain - Cheryle Séguin

Research Profile: Understanding back pain - Cheryle S��guin

Every day our spines undergo massive amounts of stress and mechanical load; even as we sleep, our spines are working to maintain posture. Because of this constant work, back pain has become the leading cause of disability globally, a problem that Cheryle Séguin, PhD, and her team at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry are committed to investigating further.

“It is really hard to treat, prevent or intercept a disease if you don’t understand what is initiating it or what’s causing it,” said Séguin, an assistant professor in the department of Physiology and Pharmacology. “We believe that by asking some really basic fundamental questions about back pain we might be able to understand what goes wrong during the early stages of the disease when intervention is actually possible.”

Séguin’s work on intervertebral disc biology and spine research recently earned her a prestigious Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award. These awards are given annually to outstanding new investigators in the first five years of their careers and provide salary support to allow them to focus on research.

“The really wonderful thing for me is that it provides recognition of the contributions that my lab has made thus far,” Séguin said.

Part of the limitation in spine research right now, she says, is that there isn’t a basic understanding of the tissues that make up the spine. Using several different mouse models they are looking what cells actually give rise to the intervertebral discs which act as shock absorbers between the vertebrae of the spine. The animal models are allowing her and her team to ask important questions about how back pain gets started, how it’s regulated and how it happens.

Currently there are no treatments besides pain management and end-stage surgery for those with intervertebral disc degeneration. She hopes their research will eventually lead to ways to treat the problem and prevent the pain, instead of just addressing the symptoms after the damage is already done.

“The research environment at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry is the single most reason for the success of the lab,” Séguin said. “I wouldn’t be able to do what I am doing without great graduate students and the support of my collaborators in the other labs here at the School.”