Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Abstract
Severe pain is often experienced by patients with head and neck cancer and is associated with a poor prognosis. Despite its frequency and severity, current treatments fail to adequately control cancer-associated pain because of our lack of mechanistic understanding. Although recent works have shed some light of the biology underlying pain in HPV-negative oral cancers, the mechanisms mediating pain in HPV+ cancers remain unknown. Cancer-derived small extracellular vesicles (cancer-sEVs) are well positioned to function as mediators of communication between cancer cells and neurons. Inhibition of cancer-sEV release attenuated pain in tumor-bearing mice. Injection of purified cancer-sEVs is sufficient to induce pain hypersensitivity in naive mice that is prevented by QX-314 treatment and in Trpv1-/- mice. Cancer-sEVs triggered calcium influx in nociceptors, and inhibition or ablation of nociceptors protects against cancer pain. Interrogation of published sequencing data of human sensory neurons exposed to human cancer-sEVs suggested a stimulation of protein translation in neurons. Induction of translation by cancer-sEVs was validated in our mouse model, and its inhibition alleviated cancer pain in mice. In summary, our work reveals that HPV+ head and neck squamous cell carcinoma-derived sEVs alter TRPV1+ neurons by promoting nascent translation to mediate cancer pain and identified several promising therapeutic targets to interfere with this pathway.
SUBMITTER: Inyang KE
PROVIDER: S-EPMC10915104 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

Pain 20230907 3
<h4>Abstract</h4>Severe pain is often experienced by patients with head and neck cancer and is associated with a poor prognosis. Despite its frequency and severity, current treatments fail to adequately control cancer-associated pain because of our lack of mechanistic understanding. Although recent works have shed some light of the biology underlying pain in HPV-negative oral cancers, the mechanisms mediating pain in HPV+ cancers remain unknown. Cancer-derived small extracellular vesicles (cance ...[more]