Pain: Aligning the Target

Keystone Symposia, Silverthorne CO

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Pain: Aligning the Target, organized by Drs. Laura M. Bohn, William K. Schmidt and Allan I. Basbaum. The conference will be held in Keystone, Colorado from February 2-5, 2020. The Keystone Symposia on Pain: Aligning the Target will bring together researchers from diverse disciplines to examine the complex problem of pain and to shed light on mechanistic underpinnings and molecular approaches towards treatment. Topics will range from understanding neurotransmission and the anatomy of pain, structural features of molecular targets for modulating pain, and novel approaches, including drug development, optogenetic and genetic approaches to controlling pain. Most conferences on pain discuss pain management (clinical focus), neuroanatomical transmission of pain (neuroscience), or the mechanism by which analgesics/anesthetics work with a focus on particular molecular targets (pharmacology). Our goal is to bring these disciplines together to aid in a more efficient design of preclinical studies and drug development by educating each other in the individual challenges and offerings of our disciplines. Ultimately, this conference should inspire researchers from diverse backgrounds to examine this fundamental health problem via many new angles. Importantly, researchers that focus on the neurocircuitry and cause of pain and those that focus on drug development for the treatment of pain generally are not generally attending the same conferences. Finally, this conference is being paired with a related conference on Somatosensation: from Detection to Perception, which will focus more on the neurobiology of pain sensation. There will be numerous opportunities for participants to intermingle at poster sessions and dinners, enabling the cross-fostering of ideas. Collectively, these events will provide a forum for the convergence of insights into the diverse causes of pain and the approaches to treatment.