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Derek Howard Brings Bioinformatics Insight to Landmark Cell Study
At Bridge Informatics (BI), we are proud to have built a team of scientists who are helping push the boundaries of what’s possible in computational biology. One of those people is Derek Howard, whose bioinformatics expertise is featured in a major new study published in Cell.
Derek is a data scientist and bioinformatician who transitioned from experimental neuroscience into computational research, bringing deep experience in high-throughput sequencing analysis, machine learning, and multi-modal data integration. His work focuses on understanding cellular function by connecting complex biological data across different measurement types.
Before joining Bridge Informatics, Derek served as a Research Methods Specialist at the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics (CAMH), where he played a key role in a breakthrough project exploring the biology of chronic pain.
The result is a landmark paper: Molecular architecture of human dermal sleeping nociceptors.
Cracking the Code of “Sleeping” Pain Neurons
Chronic neuropathic pain affects roughly one in ten people worldwide, yet the neurons driving this condition have remained frustratingly difficult to pin down. Among the most elusive are so-called “sleeping” (or silent) nociceptors, pain-sensing nerve cells that normally lie quiet, but can become overactive and generate ongoing pain even without an external trigger.
In this study, an international research team identified the molecular signature of these neurons for the first time, effectively creating a “Rosetta Stone” that translates between how these cells behave electrically and what genes define them.
Bridging Electrophysiology and Genetics with Patch-seq
One of the biggest challenges in pain neuroscience has been that sleeping nociceptors could be recognized by their electrical activity, but not by their genetic identity. Researchers could measure how they fire, but didn’t know which genes made them unique, limiting progress toward targeted therapies.
The team overcame this by using Patch-seq, a cutting-edge technique combining electrophysiology with single-cell RNA sequencing. This allowed them to map functional neuronal behavior directly onto transcriptomic profiles.
Derek Howard’s Bioinformatics Leadership
A critical piece of this discovery came from the computational side, led by Derek Howard as co-first author.
Derek spearheaded the bioinformatics analyses that integrated massive single-cell datasets, cross-species atlases, and electrophysiological features to pinpoint what truly defines sleeping nociceptors at the molecular level.
Through this work, the team identified OSMR (oncostatin M receptor) and SST (somatostatin) as key markers of these neurons.
As Derek noted in the press release, bioinformatics predictions are only as powerful as their experimental validation, and this collaboration delivered both.
From Molecular Markers to New Therapeutic Targets
Beyond identifying these cells, the study also highlights promising new directions for pain treatment. Sleeping nociceptors show especially high expression of Nav1.9 (SCN11A), an ion channel long discussed as a potential drug target for neuropathic pain.
Even more striking, the team demonstrated that oncostatin M, which activates OSMR, selectively modulates these nociceptors in human skin. This provides direct evidence that these molecular signatures matter in real human physiology.
Bioinformatics as a Translational Engine
This work is a powerful example of what modern bioinformatics makes possible. It is not just about analyzing data, but about connecting molecular identity, functional behavior, and clinical relevance into one coherent framework.
At Bridge Informatics, we are proud to see Derek’s expertise contributing to discoveries that open real paths toward precision therapies for chronic pain, and to the broader effort of decoding the nervous system’s most complex cell types.
Congratulations to Derek and the entire team on this landmark publication.
Click here to read the full article: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)01497-7
This is the first post in a two-part series on the Cell study. Here we focused on the discovery and Derek Howard’s role in it; in the next article we walk through how bioinformatics actually enabled the finding, and why integrating multiple data types was essential to identifying sleeping nociceptors.