NIH Workshop: A Critical Evaluation of Animal Pain Models

January 30, 2019 - January 31, 2019

Contact: Michael L. Oshinsky, Ph.D.
Contact Email: michael.oshinsky@nih.gov
Location:

Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center
5701 Marinelli Rd.
Rockville, MD 20852


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The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is pleased to announce an upcoming workshop entitled Critical Evaluation of Animal Pain Models for Therapeutics Development that will be held at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center on Wednesday January 30th & Thursday January 31st.

The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the use of animal models of pain and migraine for therapeutics development. This will not be a didactic lecture workshop, but will follow a discussion format with multiple breakout sessions for groups of experts to discuss and summarize which models and best practices for using behavioral models of pain and headache in the therapeutics discovery process.

Due to the complex nature and overwhelming urgency of the pain and opioid crisis in the United States, there is a need to address the crisis on multiple levels, including accelerating the development of novel therapeutics for the treatment of chronic pain conditions.

The product of this workshop will be recommendations for using behavior models of pain for screening compounds for a variety of pain disorders, such as inflammatory pain, neuropathic pain, musculoskeletal pain, trigeminal pain, migraine and cancer pain. These meeting recommendations will inform the development of a robust, rigorous screening platform, which will help enable investigators interested in developing pain therapeutics, but who lack either in-house capability or infrastructure, to conduct behavioral pharmacology studies.

This meeting will convene experts in the field of animal models for pain and experts in translational development of pain therapeutics to discuss screening programs in the preclinical process for determining if a compound should be developed to treat pain in the clinical setting.

The primary goal of this meeting is to have a frank discussion of the benefits and shortcomings of the current pain models and produce recommendations for using these models for screening compounds for a wide range of pain disorders, such as inflammatory pain, neuropathic pain, complex regional pain syndromes, trigeminal pain, migraine and cancer pain. A significant amount of time at the meeting will be spent discussing best practices in drug screening for pain treatments as well as scientific gaps in the need for the development of new models and the critical features they should possess. Due to the complex nature and overwhelming urgency of the opioid and pain crisis in the United States, there is a need to address the crisis on multiple levels. The purpose of this meeting is to convene experts in the field of animal models for pain and experts in translational development of pain therapeutics from industry to discuss screening programs in the preclinical process for determining if a compound should be developed to treat pain in the clinical setting.

Workshop Chairs:

  • Dr. Michael Oshinsky (National Institutes of Health, NINDS)
  • Dr. Tony Yaksh (University of California San Diego)
  • Dr. Jeffrey Kennedy (JK Associates BioPharma Consulting LLC).