Research focuses

Our goal is to improve the treatment of chronic pains, A major public health problems with great impact on both patient and society. To address such clinical issues, we have developed a reverse translational research strategy that goes from bedside to bench and vice versa. Starting from clinical observations or physiopatholical studies, original innovating targets or new treatment strategies are preclinically investigated using molecular, cellular or in vivo explorations. If they are relevant clinically validations lead getting back to bedside. Therefore, our basic research is always clinically relevant. Moreover, because of our close interactions with socio-economical partners, it could easily lead to designing new equipment and improving therapy to help control such chronic pains.

Our unit results from the merge of two teams who share their expertise and strength, thus getting potentiated at multiple levels: (collaborative) projects, human resources, skills and ideas, technical approaches and means. Team’s 1 main interest is on the pathophysiology and pharmacology of chronic pain, including the study of mechanisms of action and prescription patterns of current analgesic drugs and the design of new strategies in the treatment of chronic pains. Team 2 investigates trigeminal (cephalic and oral) pain, focusing on migraine and mechanical allodynia. The two teams collaborate on specific projects mainly focus on mechanisms involved in chronicization of pain. Our merger boosted (i) the development of new tools for investigating brain functions including: optogenetics, Ca2+ imaging, multi-photon microscopy, ultrasound system to analyze brain functional connectivity, mathematical tools to analyze data obtained from humans as well as animals; (ii) the opening of new research avenues including: brain processes in pain, pharmaco-epidemiology of pain and its relationship to microbiota, functional and anatomical changes in migraine neocortex; and finally (iii) our international visibility, the best way to attract bright new people.