Director's Message

Welcome to the Center for Translational Pain Research (CTPR) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. We are working to expand the creative, high-quality research being conducted at Northwestern to foster a deeper understanding of pain mechanisms.

Why Pain?

Pain is the most common reason humans visit a doctor. While it typically will dissipate on its own or after healing of the underlying disease, pain often becomes chronic and debilitating. About one in three Americans reports daily pain. That's at least 100 million adults in the United States — more than the total affected by heart disease, cancer and diabetes combined. As the U.S. population ages, prevalence will grow. A current treatment of chronic pain is opiates, the abuse of which has become a public health crisis in the U.S. Our goal for this center is to promote the development of new, non-opioid treatments for managing and ameliorating acute and chronic pain conditions.

Bench to Bedside

As part of Northwestern Medicine, our center has an extraordinary opportunity to quicken the pace at which we can translate pain science to better care. The CTPR is organized to be closely coordinated with pain patient management in the Pain Medicine Center within the Department of Anesthesiology. Close collaboration between clinicians treating pain patients and scientists developing novel therapies offers hope to patients.

We are committed to paving the way and becoming a national leader in pain medicine. We are devoted to finding safe and more cost-effective pain medicine treatments and rapidly translating these findings to meet the needs of pain patients.

Thank you for your interest in our center. Please contact us for more information.

Apkar V. Apkarian, PhD, Director, Center for Translational Pain Research