Congratulations to Rene Przkora, MD, PhD, who is the lead author on an article published in the ASA Monitor about the ongoing National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded pain treatment research network involving the University of Florida.
The article, titled “A Major Step to Improve Pain Research Infrastructure: The NIH Early Phase Pain Investigation Clinical Network (EPPIC-Net),” was published in the December edition of the newsletter, which is the official news publication of the American Society of Anesthesiologists.
The article was written with colleagues at other institutions involved in the project: Mark S. Wallace, MD; Lisa Doan, MD; Ajay D. Wasan, MD, MSc; Michael A. Ashburn, MD, MPH, MBA; and Jianren Mao, MD, PhD.
The NIH created EPPIC-Net as a resource for conducting multicenter pain trials in an efficient and systematic manner given that the absence of infrastructure to facilitate clinical trials is a major barrier to developing new pain treatments. The EPPIC-Net is housed in the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative.
EPPIC-Net aims to decrease the reliance on opioids by facilitating early-phase clinical trials of molecules, drugs, devices, and surgical procedures for pain treatment. The EPPIC-Net infrastructure contains a Clinical Coordinating Center (CCC), a Data Coordinating Center (DCC), and Clinical Research Sites (“Hubs”). The University of Florida is a hub with nine spokes.
Dr. Przkora, Professor of Anesthesiology, and Patrick Tighe, MD, MS, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and the Donn M. Dennis, MD, Professor of Anesthetic Innovation, are the Principal Investigators on the NIH U24 grant. Dr. Przkora is also Chief of the Pain Medicine Division and Director of the Multidisciplinary Pain Medicine Fellowship.
DISCLAIMER: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U24NS113800. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.