Mateusz Kuchar­czyk

Title

Somatosen­sa­tion and can­cer neuroscience 

Abstract

Neu­ronal path­ways trav­el from the brain to the spinal cord to influ­ence somatosen­sa­tion. They reg­u­late spinal and pri­ma­ry sen­so­ry neu­ron activ­i­ty, enabling the brain to fine­ly tune sig­nal lev­els trans­mit­ted through the spinal cord and con­trol the periph­ery via neu­ro­genic mechanisms. 

Our lab­o­ra­to­ry’s dual focus on the somatosen­so­ry sys­tem and can­cer neu­ro­science seeks to uncov­er the sys­tem’s involve­ment in neu­ro­genic mech­a­nisms gov­ern­ing tumori­ge­n­e­sis and relat­ed pain. Employ­ing a com­bi­na­tion of in vivo elec­tro­phys­i­ol­o­gy and cal­ci­um imag­ing with selec­tive opto- and chemo­ge­net­ic mod­u­la­tion of genet­i­cal­ly and anatom­i­cal­ly defined neu­ronal cir­cuits, we sam­ple the activ­i­ty in the spinal and periph­er­al neu­rons and cor­re­late this activ­i­ty with behav­iour­al respons­es using machine learn­ing-sup­port­ed analysis. 

We aim to link net­work-wide brain activ­i­ty with top-down abil­i­ty to influ­ence both noci­cep­tion and tumori­ge­n­e­sis. In this pur­suit, we aspire to forge inno­v­a­tive ther­a­pies for can­cer and asso­ci­at­ed pain, root­ed in a deep under­stand­ing of neu­ronal systems. 

Biog­ra­phy

Mateusz Kuchar­czyk earned a BSc (2012) and an MSc (2014) in Biotech­nol­o­gy from Jagiel­lon­ian Uni­ver­si­ty in Kraków. Sub­se­quent­ly, as a Marie Skłodows­ka-Curie trainee, he com­plet­ed his PhD in Neu­ro­science (2019) at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, spe­cial­is­ing in in vivo elec­tro­phys­i­ol­o­gy with Pro­fes­sor Antho­ny Dick­en­son and in vivo cal­ci­um imag­ing with Pro­fes­sor Stephen McMa­hon (King’s Col­lege Lon­don) to study can­cer-induced bone pain. Suc­ces­sive­ly, as a PDRA in Dr Kirsty Ban­nis­ter group (King’s), he advanced opto- and chemo­ge­net­ic tech­niques for study­ing descend­ing mod­u­la­to­ry cir­cuits in health and dis­ease. Cur­rent­ly he devel­ops Can­cer Neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy research group at Łukasiewicz-PORT in Wrocław.

His group bridges Neu­ro­science with Oncol­o­gy, aim­ing to com­pre­hend neu­ro­genic reg­u­la­tion of car­cino­gen­e­sis and asso­ci­at­ed pain. Employ­ing state-of-the-art tech­niques (i.e., in vivo opti­cal imag­ing, elec­tro­phys­i­ol­o­gy and opto­ge­net­ics) they selec­tive­ly sam­ple and mod­u­late activ­i­ty of genet­i­cal­ly defined neu­ronal pop­u­la­tions and their effects on tumour biol­o­gy. In this pur­suit, the group aspires to forge inno­v­a­tive ther­a­pies for can­cer and asso­ci­at­ed pain, root­ed in a deep under­stand­ing of neu­ronal systems.