Update on progress of IMI-PainCare, a public-private partnership supported by the European Union to improve the care of patients with acute or chronic pain. EFIC is one of about 40 partners of this consortium (www.imi-paincare.eu):
The main goal of subproject BioPain is to increase the translation between preclinical and clinical stages of analgesic drug delevopment by performing pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) modelling of biomarkers of analgesic efficacy in various parts of the nervous system. In subproject BioPain, four multicenter clinical trials are running concurrently. Each trial is run in three or four of the six countries where the BioPain academic partners are located (Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, France and Great Britain). All four trials are collecting data on the drug induced modulation of the nerve activity using different functional biomarkers (threshold tracking, spinal reflexes, EEG and fMRI). PROMs (patient reported outcome measurements) are used during the trials to collect information on the characteristics as well as the subjective sensitivity of the subjects. Simultaneously to the clinical trial, preclinical experiments are running to collect data on the drug induced modulation of peripheral nerve and brain activity using functional biomarkers similar to the ones used in the clinical trials. In parallel to the data collection, work is being invested in planning a complex data analysis as well as in the PK-PD modelling. The work of BioPain is expected to give important information on the stratification of the subjects in clinical trials and for bringing a step forward to personalized medicine.
EFIC is a consortium member of all three IMI PainCare subprojects and actively supports the project by giving scientific advice, fostering PR, and dissemination.
