The Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is an academic center affiliated with the Division of Toxicological Sciences in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

 

Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

Research Grants 1990-1991

Responses of Cultured Somatosensory Neurons to Irritants

Thomas K. Baumann, PhD
Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, Oregon

Baumann's goal is to develop an in vitro model of chemical pain transduction that can predict if a test chemical is painful. He is using patch-clamp techniques on cultures of rabbit trigeminal neurons to determine ionic mechanisms the irritants trigger. Baumann says the model could have a role in replacing in vivo irritant screening tests such as the Draize.