Major obstacle/challenge to overcome: Chronic pain conditions afflict as many as one-third of the US population and incur $560-635 billion per year in incremental healthcare costs and lost productivity (IOM Report June 29, 2011). The long term clinical goal in alleviating chronic pain is to develop targeted therapies and identify patients responsive to these therapies, both of which are supported by etiological- and mechanism-based case definitions and diagnostic criteria of disease. A major challenge in the field is the lack of a mechanism-based case definition and diagnostic criteria for multiple chronic pain conditions. Common Fund investments could facilitate the development of a new objective, biopsychosocial classification system for chronic pain disorders to overcome this major obstacle. This new system will accelerate research by standardizing research diagnoses used across laboratories, enhance clinical diagnoses by developing more objective, mechanism-based measures of disease, and identify subjects responsive to new therapies by developing novel biomarkers of disease and clinical outcomes.
Emerging scientific opportunity ripe for Common Fund investment: We propose a research program to develop a new, comprehensive, mechanism-based, biopsychosocial classification of chronic pain conditions. Three opportunities are ready for Common fund investment. This proposal endorses the ideas and sharpens the focus of "Molecular Classification of Disease", a topic that emerged from the Innovation Brainstorm meeting, and takes on sophisticated data management and analysis elements of the topics on "Beyond GWAS" and "Cross-Cutting Issues in Computation and Informatics".
Common Fund investment that could accelerate scientific progress in this field: This program would create a centralized data bank/repository containing information from a large chronic pain cohort to include study subjects with Temporomandibular Joint Disorders, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Vulvodynia, Endometriosis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Interstitial Cystitis, Headache, Low Back Pain, Arthritis, etc., recruited and identified using today's best diagnostic criteria. Many of these subjects will have multiple, comorbid chronic pain conditions. This cohort would be genotyped as well as phenotyped extensively using molecular, imaging and psychosocial methodologies. All data would be agnostically analyzed via pathway analyses and new algorithms for lumping and splitting in order to subtype and re-classify these chronic pain patients. Results emerging from the Common Fund incubator space would lead to a breakdown in the current "walls" separating these disorders (and researchers) and a transformation of diagnostic criteria based on a completely new classification of chronic pain conditions. After an intense 5 year effort, the data bank/repository and analytical tool set would become self sustaining with support from Pharma, the genotyping industry, and the NIH Pain Consortium.
Potential impact of Common Fund investment: The outcome of this project will be a completely new way of discovery and management of chronic pain conditions: researchers currently housed in different laboratories collaborating in multidisciplinary teams to study pain, rapid discovery of therapeutic targets, development of novel analgesic therapies based on common mechanisms of disease, introduction of individualized medical treatments and identification of those likely to respond to therapy. Ultimately, results from this project will lead to an overall reduction in the burden of chronic pain, currently $560-$635 billion/year in the US in incremental healthcare costs and lost productivity.
Chronic pain should be thought of as a disease unto itself like other chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, and not merely a symptom of disease. Research approaches to and management of chronic pain conditions must consider that, like other chronic conditions, disease progression and complexity, early identification and intervention, and effective therapies, all influence patient burden and economic costs of disease. A transformative classification of chronic pain conditions will ultimately reduce long-term morbidity and decrease the economic impact of these wide-spread conditions.
