Lab Director
Chronic pain is a major health problem in the US and affects 100 million Americans, but the current treatments for chronic pain are inadequate. The current epidemic of opioid abuse is a result of lack of efficient pain medicine.
The main goal of the lab is to identify novel molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie the genesis of chronic pain. We employ a multidisciplinary approach that covers in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo electrophysiology, cell biology of glial cells, immune cells, and cancer cells, transgenic mice, and mouse behaviors of various sensory modalities after inflammation, nerve injury, and cancers.
We believe that tackling the mechanisms of pain induction and resolution will lead to the development of novel therapeutics for preventing and treating chronic pain.
Lab Director
Our lab is currently studying the biological mechanisms underlying the human response to nerve injury and surgery, in particular, the way injury induced neuroplasticity and inflammation often combine to cause chronic pain after surgery or trauma. We are using a systems biology approach to understand the molecular mechanisms of inflammation, focusing on nerve injury, chronic post-surgical pain, and the maladaptive processes involved in the transition from acute to chronic pain. We utilize reverse translational methodology, identifying pathways and targets of interest in human case-control studies, and subsequently validating those findings with animal models of nerve injury. This process focuses our research and improves our ability to discern clinically meaningful targets and future potential therapies.
We have grant support from several sources, including the DOD grants: “Regional Anesthesia and Valproate Sodium for the Prevention of Chronic Post-Amputation Pain” and “VIPER: Chronic Pain after Amputation: Inflammatory Mechanisms, Novel Analgesic Pathways, and Improved Patient Safety.” The regional anesthesia and valproate sodium trial employs a clinical trial, nested epigenomics and gene expression analysis to dissect mechanisms that may prevent the development of chronic pain. The VIPER inflammatory mechanisms grant explores pathways identified from molecular analysis of amputee biosamples utilizing animal modeling, cell culture, and cohort validation to determine whether these pathways may provide novel analgesic targets. In addition this grant funds an effort to identify patients at risk for opioid related adverse events. Our research group has additionally partnered with collaborators at the Defense & Veterans Center for Integrative Pain Management (DVCIPM) who conduct their research at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for clinical trials that include both active duty and veteran amputee patients.