Splice variants of the transient receptor potential vanilloid type-1 (TRPV1) channel appear to be involved in the physiological detection of extracellular fluid (ECF) osmolality in the supraoptic nucleus (SON) and organum vasculosum lamina terminalis (OVLT). It remains to be determined whether these splice variants are directly involved as pore-forming proteins in the osmosensory transduction complex. Since these TRPV1 splice variants are not sensitive to capsaicin antagonists, such as capsazepine (Sharif Naeini et al., 2007), novel tools that specifically interfere with ion permeation through TRPV1 are required for functional studies on the involvement of this channel. In this study, we developed rabbit polyclonal antibodies targeting specifically the extracellular pre-pore loop region of rat TRPV1 (PH-4281). Histological results showed that PH-4281 is specific to rat TRPV1 and TRPV1 expression is found in regions that are known to be osmosensitive. PH-4281 could be used as a specific tool to study the osmosensory transduction complex.

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