DrIstvan Nagy

Following his graduation as an MD at University Medical School Debrecen, Hungary in 1982, Dr Nagy started to work as a neuroscientist. He obtained his PhD at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1996. He obtained the title of Doctor Medicine Habilitatus in Theoretical Medicine in 2013 at University of Szeged, Hungary, and Doctor of Sciences in Medical Sciences in 2021 at the Hungarian academy of sciences. He has been an Honorary Professor in Physiology at the University of Szeged, Hungary since 2015.

Dr Nagy has been working on the mechanisms involved in peripheral and spinal neuronal processing for 30 years . He has been particularly interested in the neurochemistry, physiology and pharmacology of nociceptive processing.

Dr Nagy has been working at Imperial College London since 1998, where he is one of the leading basic pain scientists. His pioneering work on heat transduction mechanisms and interactions between the endovanilloid and endocannabinoid systems has significantly contributed to the knowledge, which underlies recent developments of novel pharmacological approaches for pain control.

Dr Nagy uses a broad repertoire of techniques including molecular, biochemical, electrophysiological, pharmacological, morphological and behavioural approaches. Dr Nagy is the principal author of many highly-cited, seminal publications in peer-reviewed journals and books. He is a regularly invited speaker, key-note presenter and session organiser at various international conferences.

As a principal investigator, Dr Nagy leads the work of a group of undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral scientists. He has extensive collaboration with several academic and industrial scientists both within the UK and overseas.

Current actiities in Dr Nagy's laboratory:
Nociceptive mechanisms in burn injury:
To increase our understanding of the peripheral signalling mechanisms involved in the development of burn injury-associated pain, and to identify new target(s) for the development of novel analgesics for controlling burn injury-associated pain, Dr Nagy' laboratory has been engaged in studies on signalling between agents accumulating in burn tissues and sensory nerve endings innervating burn tissues. In this work, Dr Nagy and his co-workers generate metabolomic and gene expression tissue databases of various degrees of burn injury (volunteer, burn-injured patients and rats) and rat primary sensory neurons, respectively. Analysing these databases will reveal putative targets for new therapeutic approaches to control pain in burn-injured patients.

Molecular basis for inflammatory hypersensitivity of nociceptors:
To find new ways to control pain in tissue injury and subsequent inflammation, Dr Nagy's groups has been using various "omics" in combination with transgenic approaches and assessing cellular and systemic responses to various stimuli.