The aim of this programme is to deliver a consortium-based platform of national scale that will break through the complexity of pain and reveal potential new treatment approaches to address a wide spectrum of chronic and debilitating clinical conditions.
The APDP aims to deliver a UK platform, generating discovery and early translational science that will break through the complexity of pain and reveal potential new treatment approaches to address a wide spectrum of chronic and debilitating clinical conditions.
The APDP will provide new knowledge about the significant variation and unpredictability that exists in the lived experience of pain. It will uncover shared mechanisms, breaking down inconsistencies in diagnosis and treatment, providing new pain biomarkers and identifying and validating new therapeutic interventions.
The APDP will connect researchers across the breadth of biomedical, social and data sciences. It will drive new collaborations and embrace access to cutting edge technologies and diverse information sources. It brings together world-leading scientific expertise, people with chronic pain, and healthy volunteers.
APDP is jointly funded through the government’s Strategic Priorities Fund and Versus Arthritis, with additional support from Eli Lilly and the Medical Research Foundation.
It is being delivered through three interlinking thematic areas:
Multidisciplinary consortia
Multidisciplinary consortia will link together researchers across the breadth of biomedical, social and data sciences, and people with lived experience of pain. This will build the foundation for a national programme supporting discovery and translational science.
This programme will drive the development of new treatments by bringing together leadership, tools and resources to help unravel the complexity of pain.
Online safe data platform
An online safe access data platform, ALLEVIATE, will provide a key resource for the national and international pain research communities.
With close association with Health Data Research UK the data platform will bring together and curate health data from the NHS, social care and research (academic and industry), notably those generated through the other APDP awards.
This will provide a key national resource for the pain research community and support industry partnerships to tackle the long-term research challenges in understanding the complexity and unpredictability of pain and reveal new and improved treatments across diverse chronic and debilitating pain conditions.
Mapping pain complexity and uncovering the molecular and cellular basis of pain
We will expand the capabilities established through the consortia and the ALLEVIATE data hub by supporting additional research projects aimed at generating critical new knowledge in mapping the complexity of pain.