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Eight years ago, I left the intramural program at the National Institutes of Health and took on the challenge of developing a world-class academic department in the biomedical sciences. We are quickly reaching our goal of the national leadership in the study of pain and neuroscience. We have attracted outstanding scientists who utilize multidisciplinary approaches to understand the underlying mechanisms of pain and to translate these findings into approaches to diagnosis and treatment of persistent or chronic pain problems in humans. The arrival of new Dean of the Dental School, Dr. Christian Stohler, has added a new dimension to our pain program that focuses on the individual patient’s susceptibility to pain and analgesia and how individual neurochemical and endocrine differences account for patient-specific responsivity. Ron Dubner
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I welcome you to examine the pain programs at the University of Maryland. We
are proud of its scope and diversity, which span from the basic sciences to
translational research to clinical research to clinical management. We have
developed a program on pain that is located in the Dental School, but is much
more than a dental pain program. Of course, we are very concerned about pain in
the oral and craniofacial region; it is the most vulnerable part of our body to
injury. However, among our multiple interests, we also study deep pain in muscle
and viscera, sex differences in the neurobiology of pain, neonatal pain
experience and its effects on the adult response to tissue injury, and new ways
of imaging pain in the brain. Our total research funding for the study of pain
approaches $7.5 million per year and continues to grow.