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Will there ever be a cure for

chronic pain?
It can feel like torture, destroy your life and cause you to doubt your own sanity.
Sophie Elmhirst scans the horizon for a solution

Sep 9th 2019 Share

By Sophie Elmhirst

P
eter McNaughton, a professor of pharmacology at King’s College
London is a devoted optimist He acknowledges that his positivity can
P London, is a devoted optimist. He acknowledges that his positivity can
sometimes seem irrational, but he also knows that without it he
wouldn’t have achieved all that he has. And what he’s achieved is quite
possibly monumental. After decades of research into the cellular basis of

chronic pain, McNaughton believes he has discovered the fundamentals of a

drug that might eradicate it. If he’s right, he could transform millions, even
billions, of lives. What more could anyone hope for than a world without
pain?

McNaughton, nearly 70, is long-limbed, grey-haired and bespectacled.

Though he has lived in London for decades, his voice still carries the cheery
cadence of his native New Zealand. He wears blue Levis and black Nikes and
delights in a late-blooming informality after years of heading university
departments and turning up in a suit. Now, running his own lab, he can dress
as he likes. On a Friday morning in April he waited for his young team to
arrive at the modern, red-brick building in south London where he conducts
his research. (McNaughton is always the first to arrive.) Today the team was
assembled to hear a presentation by Rafaela Lone, a Brazilian scientist, who
had spent the past six months in McNaughton’s lab breeding mice with
symptoms that mimic fibromyalgia, a long-term condition that causes
widespread pain and chronic fatigue. Lone explained that her mother had
suffered from fibromyalgia for seven years. Her life had been reduced to a
misery of symptoms ranging from urinary-tract infections to intense
sensitivity to cold. Some days were bear-able; on others she couldn’t get out
of bed. “She learns how to hold the pain,” said Lone.
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