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Molecular Pain


eISSN: 17448069 | ISSN: 17448069 | Current volume: 19 | Current issue: 1 Frequency: Yearly

Journal Highlights

  • Impact Factor: 3.370
  • Indexed In: Clarivate Analytics: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), PubMed: MEDLINE, PubMed, SCOPUS, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  • Publication is subject to payment of an article processing charge (APC)
  • Submit here

Molecular Pain (MPX) is a peer-reviewed open access journal which focuses on providing a forum for molecular pain scientists to communicate their research findings in a targeted manner to others in this important and growing field. Please see the Aims and Scope tab for further information.

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).


Submission Information

Submit your manuscript today at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/molecularpain

Please see the Submission Guidelines tab for more information on how to submit your article to the journal.


Open access article processing charge (APC) information

Publication in the journal is subject to payment of an article processing charge (APC). The APC serves to support the journal and ensures that articles are freely accessible online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons license.

The APC for this journal is currently $2650 USD for regular articles and 1250 USD for Micro Reports.

The article processing charge (APC) is payable when a manuscript is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Please see further details here.


Contact

Please direct any queries to erin.obrien@sagepub.com.

 

Molecular Pain is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that considers manuscripts in pain research at the cellular, subcellular and molecular levels. Molecular Pain provides a forum for molecular pain scientists to communicate their research findings in a targeted manner to others in this important and growing field.

The field of molecular pain research has been rapidly expanding in recent years, and has great promise for the identification of highly specific and effective targets for the treatment of intractable pain.

Molecular pain research addresses physiological and pathological pain at all levels whilst integrating pain research with molecular biology, genomics, proteomics, modern electrophysiology and neurobiology.

Although several existing journals publish articles on classical pain research, none are specifically dedicated to molecular aspects of the field.

Editors-in-Chief
Jianguo Gu University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
Min Zhuo University of Toronto, Canada
Deputy Editors
Michael Caterina Johns Hopkins University, USA
Guangchen Ji Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, USA
Fusao Kato Jikei University School of Medicine, Japan
Dan McGehee University of Chicago, USA
Bai Chuang Shyu Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Taiwan
Guang-Yin Xu Institute of Neuroscience, Soochow University, China
Managing Editor
Emily England University of Toronto, Canada
Editorial Board
A. Vania Apkarian  
Carlos Belmonte Universidad Miguel Hernadez-CSIC, Spain
Tao Chen Fourth Military Medical University, China
MacDonald Christie University of Sydney, Australia
Man-Kyo Chung University of Maryland, USA
Yves De Koninck Laval University, Canada
Jennifer J. DeBerry University of Alabama, Birmingham, USA
Sulayman Dib-Hajj Yale School of Medicine, USA
Xinzhong Dong Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA
Gregory Dussor University of Texas, Dallas, USA
Hidemasa Furue Hyogo College of Medicine, Japan
Robert Gereau Washington University, USA
Peter A. Goldstein Cornell University, USA
Yun Guan Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA
Richard Harris University of Michigan Medical School, USA
Li-Yen Huang University of Texas Medical Branch at Galvestson, USA
Michael Jankowski Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, USA
Michael Jarvis Abbott Laboratories, USA
C. Justin Lee Korea Institute of Science & Technology, Korea, South, South Korea
Koga Kohei Hyogo College of Medicine, Japan
Rohini Kuner University of Heidelberg, Germany
Jon Levine University of California San Francisco, USA
Yun-Qing Li Fourth Military Medical University, China
Ceng Luo Fourth Military Medical University, China
Qiufu Q. Ma Harvard Medical School, USA
Derek Molliver University of New England, USA
Terumasa Nakatsuka Kansai University of Health Sciences, Japan
Volker Neugebauer Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, USA
Seog Bae Oh Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Uhtaek Oh Brain Science Institute of KIST, Seoul, Korea
Zhizhong Pan The University of Texas-MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA
Jeffrey C. Petruska University of Louisville, USA
Louis Premkumar Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, USA
Theodore Price University of Arizona, USA
Lintao Qu Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA
Matthias Ringkamp Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA
Maione Sabatino Universita degli Studi Della Campania, Italy
Juergen Sandkuehler Medical University of Vienna, Austria
Brian L. Schmidt New York University, USA
Philippe Seguela McGill University, Canada
Robert E. Sorge University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL, USA
Cheryl Stucky Medical College Wisconsin, USA
Yuanxiang Tao Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, USA
Andrew Todd University of Glasgow, UK
Makoto Tominaga Okazaki Institute for Integrative Bioscience, Japan
Hiroki Toyoda Osaka University, Japan
Makoto Tsuda Kyushu University, Japan
Hiroshi Ueda Nagasaki University, Japan
Yingwei Wang Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Stephen Waxman Yale University School of Medicine, USA
Feng Wei East Lansing, Michigan
Long-Jun Wu Rutgers University, USA
Tian-Le Xu Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, China
Ipek Yalcin Institute of Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience, France
Megumu Yoshimura Kumamoto Health Science University, Japan
Shengyuan Yu People's Liberation Army General Hospital, Beijing, China
Vanna Zachariou Icahn School of Medicine, USA
Hanns Ulrich Zeilhofer University of Zurich, Switzerland
Ji Zhang McGill University, Canada
Ming-Gao Zhao Fourth Military Medical University, China
Qiancheng Zhao Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Advisory Board
David Borsook Harvard Medical School
Geoffrey Burnstock University College Medical School, UK
Steve Hunt University College London, UK
Kazuhide Inoue Kyushu University, Japan
Amy MacDermott Columbia University, USA
Frank Porreca University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, USA
Michael Salter University of Toronto, Canada
Robert Yezierski University of Florida, USA
  • Adis International
  • Clarivate Analytics: Biological Abstracts
  • Clarivate Analytics: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)
  • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  • EBSCO
  • ProQuest
  • PubMed
  • PubMed: MEDLINE
  • SCOPUS

This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

This Journal recommends that authors follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical
Journals
formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/molecularpain upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not
conforming to these guidelines may be returned.

Sage Publishing disseminates high-quality research and engaged scholarship globally, and we are committed to diversity and inclusion in publishing. We encourage submissions from a diverse range of authors from across all countries and backgrounds.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Molecular Pain will be reviewed.

As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work,
that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and
that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that 
you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not
owned by you.

Please Read the Manuscript Submission Guidelines below before submitting your manuscript here:
SUBMIT MANUSCRIPT

  1. Open Access
  2. Article processing charge (APC)
  3. Article types
  4. Editorial policies
    4.1 Peer Review Policy
    4.2 Authorship
    4.3 Acknowledgements
    4.3.1 Writing assistance
    4.4 Funding
    4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
    4.6 Research ethics and patient consent
    4.7 Clinical Trials
    4.8 Reporting guidelines
  5. Publishing policies
    5.1 Publication ethics
    5.1.1 Plagiarism
    5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
    5.3 Permissions
  6. Preparing your manuscript
    6.1 Word processing formats
    6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
    6.3 Supplementary material
    6.4 Reference style
    6.5 English language editing services
  7. Submitting your manuscript
    7.1 How to submit your manuscript
    7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts
    7.3 Information required for completing your submission
    7.4 ORCID iDs
  8. On acceptance and publication
    8.1 Sage Production
    8.2 Continuous publication
    8.3 How to cite Molecular Pain articles
  9. Further information

1. Open Access

Molecular Pain is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted by peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the collection of Article Processing Charges which are paid by the funder, institution or author of each manuscript upon acceptance. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.

For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.

Full waivers will be given to authors who reside in the countries described by the Research4Life program.

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2. Article processing charge (APC)

If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time Article Processing Charge (APC) is payable. This APC covers the cost of publication and ensures that your article will be freely available online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons license.

The Article Processing Charge (APC) for this journal is $2650. Micro Report 1250 USD.

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3. Article types

Research: reports of data from original research. We anticipate that a research article will contain 5-10 figures.
Authors should try to limit the Background and Discussion sections to no more than 1000 and 1500 words
respectively. Order sections as follows:

Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
Materials and Methods
Results
Discussion
Acknowledgment
Author Contributions
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
References

Review: comprehensive, authoritative descriptions of any subject within the scope of the journal. Enquiries to the Molecular Pain Editors regarding the suitability of a proposed review prior to submission are encouraged.

Commentary: short, focused and opinionated articles on any subject within the scope of the journal. These articles are usually related to a contemporary issue, such as recent research findings. Enquiries to the Molecular Pain Editors regarding the suitability of a subject area prior to submission are encouraged.

Conflicting report: brief reports of data from original research that conflict with a recent key finding published in a high-impact, broad-scope journal, such as Science, Nature and Cell. A conflicting report can be a negative result that nulls the previous key finding. The main purpose of a conflicting report is to challenge an existing finding and to provide a different and/or opposite opinion or interpretation on a dominant view. This encourages scientific debates and helps to correct potential mistakes of a major article published in a high-impact journal. For a conflicting report, authors must clearly acknowledge the previous key finding, followed by their conflicting results. The format and length of a conflicting report are similar to that of a Molecular Pain short report.

Meeting report: a short description of a conference that the author has attended, which focuses on the key developments presented and discussed at the meeting.

Methodology: present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method.

Short report: brief reports of data from original research that present very important findings in the field. A complex figure with several panels is encouraged.

Micro report: Micro Reports offer researchers an option to publish on a small portion of data in a brief report without the need to expand into a full research article. Micro Reports can contain up to 1 figure and should describe the minimum information to replicate the study. Micro Reports will be peer-reviewed and once published, can be cited like a conventional full length paper. Please Note: The APC for Micro Reports is $1250, assessed upon acceptance. 

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4. Editorial policies

4.1 Peer review policy

Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:

•  The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors

•  The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper

•  The author has recommended the reviewer

•  The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution). 

4.2 Authorship

Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors.
Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are
acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

(i) Made a substantial contribution to the concept and design, acquisition of data or analysis and
interpretation of data,
(ii) Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
(iii) Approved the version to be published.

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. Each author should have participated
sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who
accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for
authorship.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not
constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be
listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal
Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines
for more information on authorship.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

4.3 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements
section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical
help, or a department chair who provided only general support. 

4.3.1 Third party submissions

Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

  • Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
  • Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
  • Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.

Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

4.3.2 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not
qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any
writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity
that paid for this assistance”).

It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of
Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.

4.4 Funding

Molecular Pain requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate
heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to
confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research
received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

4.5 Declaration of conflicting interests

It is the policy of Molecular Pain to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling
a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your
manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state
that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’.

For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations.

4.6 Research ethics and patient consent

Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical
Association Declaration of Helsinki
.

Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting,
Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals
, and all papers reporting animal and/or
human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional
Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and
institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.

For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants
provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.
Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the
manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient
information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized
representative.

Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants.

All research involving animals submitted for publication must be approved by an ethics committee with
oversight of the facility in which the studies were conducted. The journal has adopted the Consensus
Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare for Veterinary Journals
published by the International
Association of Veterinary Editors.

4.7 Clinical trials

Molecular Pain conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved
public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for
publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the
abstract.

4.8 Reporting guidelines

The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study.
For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed
Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials  (CONSORT) flow chart as a cited figure, and a completed
CONSORT checklist as a supplementary file.

Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.

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5. Publishing policies

5.1 Publication ethics

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to
the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics
page on the Sage Author Gateway.

5.1.1 Plagiarism

Molecular Pain and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best
practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always
investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of articles published in the journal. Equally, we seek to protect
the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked using duplicationchecking
software. Where an article is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party
copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where authorship of the
article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum
or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article (removing it from the journal); taking up the matter
with the head of department or dean of the author’s institution and/or relevant academic bodies or
societies; banning the author from publication in the journal or all Sage journals, or appropriate legal
action.

5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement

Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing
Agreement. Molecular Pain publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard
Molecular Pain license is Creative Commons by Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC 3.0), which allows 
others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is
non-commercial. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page.

Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at
the author’s request. 

5.3 Permissions

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations,
tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including
guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the
Sage Journal Author Gateway.

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6. Preparing your manuscript

6.1 Word processing formats

Preferred formats for the text and tables of your manuscript are Word DOC, RTF, XLS. LaTeX files are also
accepted. The text should be double-spaced throughout and with a minimum of 3cm for left and right
hand margins and 5cm at head and foot. Text should be standard 10 or 12 point. Word and (La)Tex
templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit
Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

Figures supplied in color will appear in color online.

6.3 Supplementary material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc)
alongside the full-text of the article. These will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article. For
more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files, which can be found
within our Manuscript Submission Guidelines page. 

6.4 Journal layout

Molecular Pain conforms to the Sage house style. Click here to review guidelines on Sage House Style. 

6.5 Reference style

References are listed in numerical order, and in the same order in which they are cited in text. All authors
should be included in the reference, surname first, followed by first initial. Abbreviate journal titles using
the NLM catalog style. The reference list appears at the end of the paper and should only include those
references cited in the text. 

For example:
Zhang Z, Xie M and Ye K. Asparagine endopeptidase is an innovative therapeutic target for
neurodegenerative diseases. Expert Opin Ther Targets 2016; 20: 1237–1245.
Click here to download the Endnote output style for Molecular Pain.

6.6 English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting
to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language
Services
on our Journal Author Gateway for further information. 

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7. Submitting your manuscript

7.1 How to submit your manuscript

Molecular Pain is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered
by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/molecularpain to login and submit
your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a
new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have
had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit
ScholarOne Online Help.

7.2 Title, keywords and abstracts

Please supply a title, short title, an abstract and keywords to accompany your article. The title, keywords
and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as
Google. Please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract
and select your keywords by visiting the Sage Journal Author Gateway for guidelines on How to Help
Readers Find Your Article Online

7.3 Information required for completing your submission

Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone
numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented
separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.

7.4 ORCID iDs

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized. 
The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
 

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8. On acceptance and publication

If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s
publishing agreement. Once your manuscript files have been check for Sage Production, the corresponding author
will be asked to pay the Article Processing Charge (APC) via a payment link. Once the APC has been processed, your
article will be prepared for publication. The accepted version of your article will be published online within 48
hours. The final, typeset version of your article will be published within 3 weeks. Please note that no production
work will occur on your paper until the APC has been received.

8.1 Sage Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the
production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned
promptly. 

8.2 Continuous publication

One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to
publication. With no issues to fill and no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a
fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it
will be completely free to view and download. Check the ‘Latest Articles’ tab on the journal website for
the latest published content. Articles are batched every month, and are then available in the Archive.

8.3 how to cite Molecular Pain articles

Molecular Pain publishes continuously by volume, and each article receives an e-location ID (see bold text
below) that must be included in the citation:
Egle M Mambretti, Katrin Kistner, Stefanie Mayer, Dominique Massotte, Brigitte L Kieffer, Carsten
Hoffmann, Peter W Reeh, Alexander Brack, Esther Asan, and Heike L Rittner
Functional and structural characterization of axonal opioid receptors as targets for analgesia
Mol Pain January-December 2016 12: 1744806916628734, first published on March 1, 2016
doi:10.1177/1744806916628734

You can also download citation information by clicking Download to citation manager under the services
tab for each article:

Services > Download to citation manager

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9. Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the Manuscript Submission process should
be sent to the Editorial Office as follows:

Erin O'Brien | erin.obrien@sagepub.com

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