Mentorship in precision pain medicine via EPPIC-NET

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Abstract The Early Phase Pain Investigation Clinical Network (EPPIC-Net) is designed to rapidly and efficiently translate advances in the neurobiology of pain into treatments for people with chronic and acute pain, conditions associated with a significant burden to both patients and society. Dr. Edwards is one of the Principal Investigators of EPPIC-Net’s Clinical Coordinating Center (CCC); the primary goal of the CCC for EPPIC-Net is to promote and facilitate, from initial conception through final analysis, clinical trials in adult and pediatric populations with acute or chronic pain by providing efficient methodological, organizational and logistical support. One of the CCC’s Specific Aims is to expand the pool of experienced clinical Investigators and research staff to be participants and leaders of multicenter clinical research trials by providing education, training, resources and professional mentorship. This K24 would allow Dr. Edwards to increase the amount of time he spends mentoring junior pain scientists. Much of this mentoring will involve work on precision pain medicine, including biomarker validation studies, and deep phenotyping of patient populations to understand the biologic basis of a specific pain condition and its response to treatment. Collectively, there is an urgent need for more research to establish best practices in clinical pain management, and a limited workforce pipeline of clinical pain researchers to meet NIH’s long-term goals of providing effective non-opioid options for the treatment of pain conditions. Increasing the supply and availability of mentors in the field with the goal of mentoring a new generation of diverse and highly skilled clinical pain researchers is a critically-important goal addressed by this K24. This project would efficiently leverage current HEAL funding (for the EPPIC-Net CCC) to encourage an interest in the field of clinical pain management, generate innovative research projects, and increase the number of clinical researchers, especially research from diverse background, trained in high-quality clinical pain research.