Two Washington State University seniors received awards for their undergraduate research presentations at the annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) on Nov. 13.
Jenna Pederson, a general studies in biological sciences major from Silverdale, received one of 13 awards in the physiology and pharmacology category, which was sponsored by Merck & Co. and the Society for Leukocyte Biology. Her research project is titled “Can Human Pain be Modeled in a Rat?”
Pederson said human pain severity is often assessed by the extent to which it disrupts normal activities such as working and exercising; for her research, she looked at a normal behavior of rats—burrowing. She conducted experiments to determine whether pain can be reliably measured by deficits in burrowing behavior, and whether commonly used pain relievers can reverse pain-suppressed burrowing. She reported that while further study is needed, utilizing burrowing behavior in rats may be a good model for measuring pain and the impact of drugs on that pain. Ultimately, data obtained may improve translation of pre-clinical drug studies to the clinic.