# Sensory receptors of the vagus nerve

> **NIH NIH DP1** · HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL · 2020 · $1,186,500

## Abstract

Project Summary
The discoveries of primary sensory receptors that mediate our external senses of smell, touch, taste, and
vision were landmark achievements. In contrast, internal sensory systems of the vagus nerve are vastly
understudied at a molecular level, with primary sensory receptors unknown in any organ system. The
vagus nerve is a major conduit between brain and body that controls feeding behavior, respiration, blood
pressure, metabolism, heart rate, nausea, and cough. Mechanosensory and chemosensory transduction
mechanisms in the vagus nerve present tremendously important problems in sensory biology. Sensory
receptors that detect meal-induced stomach distension, blood pressure at the aortic arch, lung expansion
during breathing, irritants that cause cough, or chemotherapeutics that induce nausea are unknown.
Understanding how the vagus nerve signals at a molecular level is relevant for a wide range of clinical
conditions, including obesity, diabetes, colitis, asthma, nausea, depression, and epilepsy.
The goals of this project are to identify primary sensory receptors of the vagus nerve that survey internal
organ state. Initial efforts will focus on finding stomach and lung mechanoreceptors as well as aortic
baroreceptors, and work could be extended to identify irritant and toxin receptors that evoke cough and
nausea. Vagal mechanoreceptors will be identified using a novel in vivo ganglion imaging approach that
permits analysis of single neuron responses to internal organ stimuli. In vivo ganglion imaging is
compatible with mosaic loss-of-function approaches like RNAi for analysis of gene function.
Deconstructing the sensory biology of vagal afferents will reveal basic insights into how autonomic
physiology is controlled by the nervous system, and may provide new opportunities for therapy design.
This proposal builds on years of foundational work, and is not supportable by traditional funding
mechanisms due to the large project scope, the risk associated with receptor-identification studies, and
my limited publication record in this new field. So far, our early work in this system has characterized
sensory neuron types in different physiological systems (Cell, 2015). Funding would enable new
molecular-level efforts to identify primary sensory receptor proteins that detect internal sensory cues.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9977130
- **Project number:** 5DP1AT009497-05
- **Recipient organization:** HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
- **Principal Investigator:** STEPHEN Daniel LIBERLES
- **Activity code:** DP1 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $1,186,500
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-09-30 → 2022-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9977130

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9977130, Sensory receptors of the vagus nerve (5DP1AT009497-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9977130. Licensed CC0.

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