David is a current medical/graduate student who completed a summer internship with the NPRG in 2008 under the direction of Alex Binshtok, Ph.D. (Instructor - Harvard Medical School).  David joined the NPRG in Fall 2008 as a graduate dissertation fellow. 

 

Research

My research focuses on the development of novel methods to reduce inflammatory and postoperative pain using targeted delivery of charged local anesthetics.  A second focus is to characterize the activation and sensitization properties of the non-selective cation channel TRPV1.  This work is being conducted under the mentorship of Clifford J. Woolf, M.D., Ph.D., and Alex Binshtok, Ph.D., internationally renowned neuroscientists who have developed a novel local- and regional-anesthesia approach that selectively blocks pain sensation while preserving non-painful somatic sensations and motor function.  Their 2007 Nature publication relating to this discovery has been ranked by Faculty of 1000 Medicine as the second highest rated research publication of all time in all of medicine. 1,2

 

Bibliography

1. Binshtok AM, Bean BP, and Woolf CJ. Inhibition of nociceptors by TRPV1-mediated entry of impermeant sodium channel blockers. Nature, 449 (7162): 607-611, 2007. 

2. Faculty of 1000 Medicine, 24 Feb 2009, http://www.f1000medicine.com/top10/classics/