New target identified for the treatment of primary headaches

Lina PortmanMay 28, 2024

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“Recently, we and research groups from the International Consortium for Cluster Headache Genetics network identified a few key regions of our genome strongly linked to an increased risk of developing cluster headaches using GWAS. Genes from these regions could potentially represent future drug targets and we have begun to characterize one of the top candidates, MERTK, in patient and control tissues,” says Andrea Carmine Belin.

For human studies, biological tissues from patients with a validated diagnosis of cluster headache and neurologically healthy controls were collected.

Since the researchers currently did not have access to human nerve tissue, they used rat tissue to study the trigeminal ganglion. For animal studies, the rat trigeminal ganglion was dissected and they studied MERKT, its ligands as well as receptors and ligands well known to be active in this tissue by immunohistochemistry.

Jacob Edvinsson and Lars Edvinsson, both from Lund University, participated in the study.

The next step

Primarily, the team plans to characterize MERTK and its ligands in other cell and tissue types from patients and controls and study how activity is affected by immunological reactions in the trigeminal ganglion, as MERTK plays an important role in neuroinflammation.

“We also want to examine MERTK in tissues from patients with headache diagnoses other than cluster headaches to learn whether MERTK is affected specifically in cluster headaches or if it is generally involved in other primary headaches such as cluster headaches. migraine,” explains Andrea Carmine Belin.

Cluster headaches and migraines have similar characteristics in terms of symptoms and are to some extent treated with the same type of medications.

The study was funded by the Mellby Gård Foundation and the Swedish Brain Foundation.