Gary R. Lewin

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Gary R. Lewin (* 1965 on the Isle of Man ) is a British neurobiologist who deals with the perception of pain.

Lewin grew up in Douglas (Isle of Man) . He studied physiology and pharmacology at the University of Sheffield with a bachelor's degree in 1986 and received his doctorate in 1990 with Stephen B. McMahon at St. Thomas Hospital Medical School (Sherrington School of Physiology) in London . The pain researcher Patrick David Wall also had an influence on him there . As a post-doctoral student he spent four years with Lorne Mendell at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNY), most recently as Research Assistant Professor. In 1993 he received a Humboldt Research Award and went to the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich to study with Yves-Alain Barde (research on neurotrophin-3, brain-derived neurotrophic factor BDNF). He has been a group leader at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin-Buch since 1996 . He has also been a professor at the Charité since 2003 .

Lewin discovered the role of NGF in injuries and inflammation and the associated pain at SUNY in the 1990s . He was able to use antibodies against NGF to inhibit inflammatory pain in mice, which later resulted in a drug against osteoarthritis that was in clinical tests in 2019.

In 2007 he also discovered the role of the protein STOML3 in neuropathic pain (tactile sensitivity), which controls ion channels in cells. By inhibiting the protein, he succeeded in suppressing pain, which also led to the development of a drug. Other researchers had previously discovered evidence of nematodes that the sense of touch works mechanically by acting on ion channels in nerve endings in the skin.

In 2019 he received the Ernst Jung Prize for basic research on the sense of touch and pain perception with new prospects for therapies for chronic pain.

His experiments on naked mole rats are controversial . Lewin found out that they can go up to 30 minutes without oxygen, which made them interesting experimental animals for him in the search for therapies for strokes and heart attacks. To do this, he subjected the animals to artificial oxygen deprivation and noticed with Thomas Park that they were switching their metabolism from galactose to fructose. This was criticized in 2017 by the organization Doctors Against Animal Experiments , which is generally directed against animal experiments , and given its negative price Heart of Stone . Because of their insensitivity to pain, Lewin also uses the naked mole rat as experimental animals for research into the sense of pain, but according to its own information only takes blood and looks for the genes responsible for the lack of sense of pain. In 2011 he received an ERC Advanced Grant to support these experiments. He found that the naked mole rat lacked substance P in the skin (and the pain sensitivity of the naked mole rat increases if the substance is present in genetically modified individuals) and that the pain receptor TrkA, which NGF attacks, is slightly changed in naked mole rats.

Lewin also researches other aspects of naked mole rat biology, such as their language, at his laboratory. In his laboratory he plans to expand his naked mole rat colony into the second largest laboratory colony after Google , where the old age of the naked mole rat is being researched.

He is married and has three children.

Fonts (selection)

  • with LM Mendell: Nerve growth factor and nociception, Trends in Neurosciences, Volume 16, 1993, pp. 353-359
  • with AM Ritter, LM Mendell: Nerve growth factor-induced hyperalgesia in the neonatal and adult rat, Journal of Neuroscience, Volume 13, 1993, pp. 2136-2148
  • with A. Rueff, LM Mendell: Peripheral and central mechanisms of NGF-induced hyperalgesia, European Journal of Neuroscience, Volume 6, 1994, pp. 1903-1912
  • with YA Barde: Physiology of neurothrophins, Annual Review of Neuroscience, Volume 19, 1996, pp. 289-317
  • with Dieter Riethmacher, Carmen Birchmeier a. a .: Severe neuropathies in mice with targeted mutations in the ErbB3 receptor, Nature, Volume 389, 1997, p. 725
  • with P. Carroll u. a .: A role for BDNF in mechanosensation, Nature Neuroscience, Volume 1, 1998, p. 42
  • with CL Stucky: Isolectin B4-positive and-negative nociceptors are functionally distinct, Journal of Neuroscience, Volume 19, 1999, pp. 6497-6505
  • with JB Pesquero, Michael Bader a. a .: Hypoalgesia and altered inflammatory responses in mice lacking kinin B1 receptors, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Volume 97, 2000, pp 8140-8145
  • with Margaret P. Price a. a .: The mammalian sodium channel BNC1 is required for normal touch sensation, Nature, Volume 407, 2000, p. 1007
  • with MP Price u. a .: The DRASIC cation channel contributes to the detection of cutaneous touch and acid stimuli in mice, Neuron, Volume 32, 2001, pp. 1071-1083
  • with R. Moshourab: Mechanosensation and pain, Journal of Neurobiology, Volume 61, 2004, pp. 30-44
  • with C. Wetzel u. a .: A stomatin-domain protein essential for touch sensation in the mouse, Nature, Volume 445, 2007, p. 206
  • with P. Jansen u. a .: Roles for the pro-neurotrophin receptor sortilin in neuronal development, aging and brain injury, Nature Neuroscience, Volume 10, 2007, p. 1449
  • with Ying Lu u. a .: Selective inflammatory pain insensitivity in the African naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), PLoS biology, Volume 6, 2008, Issue 1
  • with S. Ranade u. a .: Piezo2 is the major transducer of mechanical forces for touch sensation in mice, Nature, Volume 516, 2014, p. 121
  • with Thomas Park u. a .: Fructose driven glycolysis supports anoxia resistance in the naked mole-rat, Science, Volume 356, 2017, pp. 307-311

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marcus Latton: Research on naked mole rats against pain , rbb, May 23, 2019
  2. ↑ Vera Glaßer, How naked mole rats defy lack of oxygen , MDC 2017
  3. ^ Bernstein Network for Computational Neuroscience
personal data
SURNAME Lewin, Gary R.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British neurobiologist
DATE OF BIRTH 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Isle of Man