In November 2018, the Chronic Pain research team led by professor Gao Yongjing of the Institute of Marine Medicine of Nantong University made important progress in the research of the pathogenesis of neuropathic pain. Their studies have found that TLR8, a member of the intrinsic immune response molecule TLR (a toll-like receptor), promotes neuroinflammatory responses in the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) through non-classical pathways and plays an important role in neuropathic pain maintenance. At the same time, their study detected that the distribution of TLR8 in human DRG would provide ideas for the future development of TLR8-targeted analgesics.

The results of the research were published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM). All the work of the paper was completed by NantongUniversity independently. Gao Yongjing is the corresponding author of the paper, and team members Zhang Zhijun, Guo Jianshuang, and Li Sisi are also the first authors.