Chronic pain: Advanced Pain Discovery Platform 

Advanced Pain Discovery Platform

The Advanced Pain Discovery Platform, or APDP, brings together pain researchers from across the UK. We are working together to understand chronic pain. The APDP projects range from basic lab-based science through to psychological and sociological research. People with lived experience of pain are involved in all the APDP projects to make sure that this research is relevant to everyone living with chronic pain. 

Research overview

The APDP supports a large UK-wide team of leading pain researchers. Together, we want to understand why pain can become long-lasting, why it affects people in different ways, and how we can find better treatments. We will study how changes in our bodies and brains, thoughts and feelings, and our everyday lives can shape pain. 

What is the aim of this research?

The APDP supports four large, multidisciplinary UK-wide consortia, a data hub to support national and international pain researchers, and supports twelve research projects helping understand the root cause of pain.  

Through this investment:

• We want to understand what causes pain and why short-term pain can turn into chronic pain. 
• We want to help researchers safely access data from groups of people whose pain has been carefully recorded and described. This helps researchers compare people’s experiences of pain. 
• We will look for new ways to treat pain in different conditions. 
• We will bring together experts who do not always work together, such as scientists, doctors, data specialists and people living with pain. By sharing ideas, we can build stronger pain research for the future. 

Why is this research important?

Everyone’s pain is different. Many people with chronic pain have more than one type of pain at the same time. 

Pain is also complex. It can be affected by changes in our brains and bodies, but also by our thoughts, feelings, and relationships. We still need to learn which factors matter most and how they work together. 

Pain can affect how you move, think, sleep and feel. It can also make it harder to spend time with the people you care about. 

We need research to help us understand pain better. This knowledge can help us find treatments that work well and cause fewer side effects. 

By learning more about pain and how to prevent or treat it, we can reduce the impact it has on people with arthritis and related conditions.

What are we doing?

APDP is a five-year programme worth £25.5 million. Arthritis UK funds it with UK Research and Innovation, with extra support from Eli Lilly and the Medical Research Foundation. 

Alleviate is a UK data hub for pain research. A data hub is a safe place where researchers can find and use information from many studies. This will help researchers learn from a much bigger picture of people’s pain. 

Consortium Against Pain in Equality [CAPE], is led by Professor Tim Hales at the University of Dundee. The team will study how difficult experiences in childhood can affect chronic pain and how people respond to treatment. 

Consortium to Research Individual, Interpersonal, & Social Influences in Pain (CRIISP) is led by Professor Ed Keogh at the University of Bath. The team will study how thoughts, feelings, relationships and lifestyle can affect chronic pain in musculoskeletal conditions, and in other painful conditions. 

Advanced Discovery of Visceral Analgesics by Neuroimmune Targets And the Genetics of Extreme human phenotypes visceral pain consortium (ADVANTAGE) is led by Professor Geoff Woods and Professor Ewan St John Smith at the University of Cambridge. The team will study visceral pain. This means pain that starts inside the body’s organs, such as in endometriosis, colitis or kidney disease. 

Partnership for Assessment and Investigation of Neuropathic Pain: Studies Tracking Outcomes, Risks and Mechanisms (PAINSTORM) is led by Professor David Bennett at the University of Oxford. The team will study neuropathic pain, which is pain caused by damage to the nerves. This can happen in conditions such as diabetes, after chemotherapy, or in people living with HIV. 

Twelve more research projects were supported as part of the APDP. 

These projects will help us understand what causes long-lasting pain in arthritis and related conditions. Each project brings us closer to better ways to treat pain.

The projects also cover conditions such as fibromyalgia and sciatica. By studying these conditions, researchers can learn more about why pain lasts and how we might stop it.

What have we found?

Researchers from the APDP continue to analyse data from their projects but some of the first findings include: 

• Stressful or harmful experiences in childhood makes people more likely to experience chronic pain when they are adults. Researchers who are part of the CAPE consortium found that one gene, FKBP5, may be important in regulating our response to stress and increasing our vulnerability to future chronic pain. 
• Researchers from the PAINSTORM consortium have found a new gene called SLC45A4 that may affect how people feel pain. This could lead to new medicines for chronic pain that target this gene. 
• The CRIISP consortium has investigated how Social factors can affect whether chronic pain gets better or worse. These findings mean that health and social care systems should look at wider people with chronic pain may need wider changes, not only individual healthcare or social care support. 

What are the next steps?

The APDP brought together the UK's leading pain researchers. These researchers continue to work on understanding the complexity of chronic pain. Here are some examples: 

• Researchers from the PAINSTORM consortium are part of a new MRC grant to develop innovative human models that better replicate complex pain pathways in the lab. This work builds upon the collaborations and research funded by the APDP.  
• Dr George Goodwin was an early career researcher in the APDP. He has now been awarded a prestigious Arthritis UK Career Development Fellowship to support his research career. This fellowship will build on research from the APDP to understand whether a particular type of nerve is important for arthritis pain.
• Professor Fran Denk led a research project as part of the APDP. She is now one of the lead researchers for the Arthritis UK TOPPIA consortium. This consortium is bringing leading researchers together to tackle one of the largest unmet clinical needs in inflammatory arthritis — pain reduction.