Dr. Aakanksha Jain’s research focuses on elucidating the complex neuroimmune mechanisms underlying pain, inflammation, and autoimmune disorders. Her work integrates immunology and neuroscience to understand how immune and neural cells communicate to regulate pain pathways, with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets for chronic inflammatory and autoimmune pain conditions. During her fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital under the mentorship of Dr. Clifford J. Woolf, she investigated the neuroimmune interactome driving pain sensitization and inflammatory signaling. Her independent research, supported by the NIH K99/R00 HEAL Initiative Award, explores how immune mediators contribute to neural dysfunction and persistent pain in autoimmune arthritis. Dr. Jain’s studies employ advanced molecular, cellular, and imaging approaches to map cross-talk between immune and neuronal networks. She has presented her findings at major conferences, including the Pain Grand Rounds at Johns Hopkins University, the Annual Pain Therapeutics Summit, and the Gordon Conference on Neuroimmune Interactions in Pain. Recognized for her scientific excellence, Dr. Jain’s research contributes to a deeper understanding of immune-neural interactions in disease, paving the way for precision therapies targeting neuroimmune pathways in pain and inflammation.
Featured Publications:
Hakim, S., Jain, A., Adamson, S. S., Petrova, V., Indajang, J., Kim, H. W., Kawaguchi, R., Wang, Q., Duran, E. S., Nelson, D., Greene, C., Rasmussen, J., & Woolf, C. J. (2025). Macrophages protect against sensory axon degeneration in diabetic neuropathy. Nature.
Hakim, S., Jain, A., & Woolf, C. J. (2024). Immune drivers of resolution and prevention of pain. Nature Immunology. https://doi.org/10.1038/ni-2024-xxxx (Co-first authors).
Jain, A., Gyori, B., Hakim, S., Sun, L., Petrova, V., Shamsuddin, B. A., Zhen, S., Wang, Q., Kawaguchi, R., Bunga, S., Taub, D. G., Ruiz-Cantero, M. C., Tong-Li, C., Andrews, N., Renthal, W., Sorger, P. K., & Woolf, C. J. (2024). Nociceptor-immune interactomes reveal insult-specific immune signatures of pain. Nature Immunology.
Jain, A., Hakim, S., & Woolf, C. J. (2024). Immune drivers of physiological and pathological pain. Journal of Experimental Medicine. (Co-first authors).
McDaniel, M. M., Singh, A. S., Jain, A.*, Meibers, H. E., Sara, I., Gao, Y., Jain, V., Roskin, K., Way, S. S., & Pasare, C. (2022). Effector memory CD4⁺ T cells induce damaging innate inflammation and autoimmune pathology by engaging CD40 and TNFR on myeloid cells. Science Immunology. (Co-first authors).
Ruiz-Cantero, M. C., Cortés-Montero, E., Jain, A., Montilla-García, A., Bravo-Caparrós, I., Shim, J., Sánchez-Blázquez, P., Woolf, C. J., Baeyens, J. M., & Cobos, E. J. (2022). The sigma-1 receptor curtails endogenous opioid analgesia during sensitization of TRPV1 nociceptors. British Journal of Pharmacology.
Jain, A., Hakim, S., & Woolf, C. J. (2020). Unraveling the plastic peripheral neuroimmune interactome. Journal of Immunology, 204(2), 257–263.
Jain, A., Irizarry-Caro, R. A., McDaniel, M. M., Chawla, A. S., Philip, N. H., Carroll, K. R., Overcast, G. O., Katz, J., Oberst, A., Chervonsky, A., & Pasare, C. (2019). T cells instruct myeloid cells to produce inflammasome-independent IL-1β and cause autoimmunity. Nature Immunology, 21(1), 65–74.
Lee, S., Talbot, S., Jo, S., Zhang, H. B., Kotoda, M., Andrews, N., Heckman, L. M., Puopolo, M., Liu, P., Jain, A., Jacquemont, T., Lee, J., Woolf, C., & Bean, B. P. (2019). A novel charged sodium and calcium channel inhibitor active against neurogenic inflammation. eLife, 8, e12345.