Current Challenges in Translational Pain Research

Opinion

Current challenges in translational pain research

Jianren Mao

MGH Center for Translational Pain Research, Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA

The current gap between basic science research and the development of new analgesics presents a serious challenge for the future of pain medicine. This challenge is particularly difficult in the search for better treatment for comorbid chronic pain conditions because: (i) animal ‘pain’ models do not simulate multidimensional clinical pain conditions; (ii) animal behavioral testing does not assess subjective pain experience; (iii) preclinical data provide little assurance regarding the direction of new analgesic development; and (iv) clinical trials routinely use over-sanitized study populations and fail to capture the multidisciplinary consequences of comorbid chronic pain. Therefore, a paradigm shift in translational pain research is necessary to transform the current strategy from focusing on molecular switches of nociception to studying pain as a system-based integral response that includes psychosocial comorbidities. Several key issues of translational pain research are discussed in this review.

pain research can play a unique role by developing innovative experimental paradigms and integrating multifaceted research findings at the system level. In this review, I will discuss several issues related to translational pain research and offer some thoughts on future directions. Nociception versus clinical pain: a physician’s perspective Nociception is the neural processes encoding noxious stimuli that could create tissue damage, whereas clinical pain is the perceived actual or potential nociception of which patients complain. Currently, acute pain due to surgery or trauma can typically be treated with time-honored conventional analgesics including opioids and non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)...