Sascha R. A. Alles, PhD

As a neuroscientist and researcher, I am interested in various subjects including chronic pain, nociception, ion channels, sensory neurons, the spinal cord, electrophysiology, calcium imaging and the use of human tissues in research. My interest in neuroscience started at a young age because of my experience with chronic pain.

Our lab's goal is to unravel the molecular mechanisms of nociception and chronic pain in preclinical models and human patients to help develop novel non-opioid treatments. Our lab utilizes a combination of approaches, such as electrophysiological, imaging, behavioral, bioinformatics and molecular biology techniques, with a particular focus on the physiology of neurons of the periphery, spinal cord and brain. We collaborate with clinical colleagues whenever possible to guide our studies, and many of our studies rely on using human or human-derived tissues. We collaborate with institutions including New York University, the University of Florida, the University of Kansas Medical Center and the University of New Mexico.

Some of our work was featured in The Journal of Pain (June 2024) for our electrophysiological studies of human dorsal root ganglion (DRG) and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC)-derived sensory neurons. We have studied sensory neuron function and the role of ion channels and receptors in regulating neuronal excitability in chronic pain, including trigeminal neuropathic pain, chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain, back pain and traumatic nerve injury. In my previous work, I characterized the function of different voltage-gated ion channels in central neurons of the spinal cord and brain, including sodium channel Nav1.7, calcium channels (L, P/Q and T-type), and those affected by alpha2delta-1 ligands gabapentin and pregabalin.

Due to my expertise in the pain field, I serve as a reviewer for different National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) grant review panels. I am an editorial board member at the Journal of Pain. I am an associate member of the Royal College of Science, UK, and a member of the Society for Neuroscience and the U.S. Association for the Study of Pain. I have been a researcher for over 15 years and began working at Cincinnati Children’s in 2025.