Director’s Welcome
As the founding director of the Center for Advanced Pain Studies (CAPS), I welcome your interest in our center. CAPS was founded in 2019 through a Strategic Center Investment Program (SCI) grant that pledges 4 years of support for our Center from UTD. Our mission is to advance the basic science of pain. We strive to take this new knowledge and develop non-opioid therapeutics to better treat pain.
The foundation of our scientific endeavors is funding from NIH and other federal sources. CAPS faculty are currently supported by over $10,000,000 in federal funding. Since our founding, CAPS faculty have been awarded three new R01’s from NIH, demonstrating our commitment to continuing to grow our research enterprise. Philanthropic support to CAPS is invested directly into our research mission. We are entirely focused on creating innovative solutions for pain treatment through cutting-edge research in our laboratories.
Chronic pain is one of the most important medical problems facing our society. According to a 2016 National Health Interview Survey, “20.4% (50 million) of U.S. adults had chronic pain and 8.0% (19.6 million) of U.S. adults had high-impact chronic pain.” The prevalence of chronic pain coupled with the rise in prescription opioids to treat pain has led to a sustained increase in opioid related deaths over the past decade. Astonishingly, 130 people die every day from an opioid overdose.
Unfortunately, this is a crisis that does not have an easy answer. Opioids, while extremely useful and efficacious for relieving severe acute pain, should likely not be used for chronic pain treatment, and may even exacerbate pain when given over long periods of time. New therapeutics are badly needed for chronic pain patients. These new therapeutics are likely to arise from innovative basic science research. Our focus is on taking new approaches to pain target identification and then developing therapeutics around those targets. We are entrepreneurial, recognizing that private sector investment is key to moving new drugs to the marketplace. I do not think that you will find another pain center in the world that is more active in accelerating basic science toward the clinic.
Dr. Ted Price
Director, Center for Advanced Pain Studies