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Oxford pain researchers are playing a major role in a new multi-million pound research programme launched by a consortium of funders, including UKRI, Versus Arthritis, Eli Lilly and the Medical Research Foundation.

View of a woman's back that she is clutching in pain
This is a journey. A lot of fantastic research has been done in the past, but we haven't cracked the problem yet, and we need to develop new ways to go forward. This can be achieved through patient partners and scientists working collectively, and effectively, to move research forward. We hope that this can deliver the best outcomes for patients with chronic pain. - David Walsh, Director of the Advanced Pain Discovery Platform

The Advanced Pain Discovery Platform (APDP) is a UK-based network of scientists, clinicians and patients who are coming together to try and deliver new breakthroughs in understanding human pain.

Chronic pain is one of the greatest unmet needs in healthcare. It is the leading global cause of disability and carries an enormous socioeconomic cost in the UK and worldwide. But progress in delivering new treatments has been difficult and slow.

The APDP represents the largest ever coordinated programme of pain research in the UK, and comprises experts in clinical and neurobiological aspects of pain, sociologists, psychologists, and data scientists, and spans research and healthcare institutions across the UK and beyond. The APDP has a particularly strong involvement of people with lived experience of chronic pain.

Read the full story on the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences website.