NEW YORK – Wake Forest University School of Medicine on Monday said it has received $1.9 million from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse, which it will use to continue a project aimed at identifying biomarkers that can identify individuals at risk of developing chronic pain.
Although millions of people suffer from chronic pain, for example, after getting surgery, the condition is poorly understood and there is no way to predict who will develop it. In 2019, 18 hospitals and academic research centers around the country, including Wake Forest's Center for Precision Medicine, came together to form the Acute to Chronic Pain Signatures Consortium with the goal of homing in on biomarkers that can identify which patients are at risk of experiencing chronic pain post-surgery. The consortium kicked off with a $4 million NIDA grant, and the latest funds will allow the project to continue through July 2026.
"This additional funding will allow us to continue our work to identify characteristic biomarkers that will help identify individuals at risk for developing chronic pain," Michael Olivier, professor of molecular medicine and director of Wake Forest University School of Medicine's Center for Precision Medicine, said in a statement. "We hope this research will lead to better and individualized treatments for patients who suffer from this debilitating condition."
The research team, led by Olivier and two other Wake Forest School of Medicine colleagues, Carl Langefeld, professor of biostatistics and data science, and Timothy Howard, professor of biochemistry, will collaborate with the University of California, Davis' West Coast Metabolomics Center. They will take blood samples from patients before and after surgery and profile them for metabolites and lipids to try to identify patterns predictive of chronic pain.