Musculoskeletal Pain: New Advances in Diagnosis and Management

SIG Name: Musculoskeletal Pain

Description of Symposium: This symposium will highlight some of the latest advancements in musculoskeletal pain, spanning novel pain mechanisms and treatments, clinical phenotyping and implementation science. It features a series of talks by global leaders in our field and some of our most promising emerging researchers.
The program will begin with four 30-minute plenary talks. Eva Kosek (Karolinska Institute, Sweden, ) will discuss advancements in back pain phenotyping (BACPAP initiative), crucial for personalized treatment. Wade Kingery & David Clark (Stanford University, USA) will then explore the role of autoantibodies in osteoarthritis and back pain, offering new mechanistic insights and highlighting opportunities for novel therapeutics.
Following this, Vicky Chapman (University of Nottingham, UK) will present on soluble epoxide hydrolase as a potential new therapeutic target for osteoarthritis pain. Finally, Martjie Venter (UNSW, Australia) will address the practical implementation of effective non-drug care for back pain within healthcare systems.
After a short break, three 10-minute talks will be presented by our trainee and early career researcher abstract award winners. This symposium will offer a broad overview of key advancements and emerging research in musculoskeletal pain, and will be of interest to basic scientists, clinical researchers, and clinicians alike.

Intended Audience: Cross-disciplinary

Educational Objectives:

• Describe current advances in diagnostic and management techniques for osteoarthritis and back pain.
• Appreciate the evolving mechanistic understandings of musculoskeletal pain.
• Describe advances in implementing non-drug musculoskeletal pain care within health systems.

Speakers

Martjie Venter University of New South Wales
Australia

Martjie is a PhD Candidate at the University of New South Wales and Neuroscience Research Australia, as well as a physiotherapist in the area of musculoskeletal rehabilitation. Her doctoral research focusses on the translation of evidence-based interventions for chronic low back pain from research to clinical practice.

David Clark Stanford University
USA

Dr. Clark is Professor and Vice-Chair for Academic Affairs in the Department of Anesthesiology at Stanford University. His clinical practice involves the treatment of patients which chronic pain, most often musculoskeletal in nature. He also sees individuals as part of a Transitional Pain Service who are recovering from recent operations. His research program involves both laboratory and clinical research. Topics of interest to the laboratory group involve pain after traumatic brain injury as well as the contributions of autoimmunity to chronic pain. He is involved in clinical trials primarily of non-pharmacologic approaches for the management of low back and other forms of musculoskeletal pain.

Victoria Chapman University of Nottingham
United Kingdom

Professor Victoria Chapman is Professor of Neuropharmacology at the University of Nottingham and an internationally recognised expert in pain neurobiology and translational analgesic research. Her research focuses on the neurophysiological and neuropharmacological mechanisms underlying chronic pain, particularly osteoarthritis and inflammatory joint disease. Following pharmacology training at University College London, she completed a PhD in spinal nociceptive processing under Professor Anthony Dickenson before undertaking postdoctoral research in Paris with Professor Jean-Marie Besson, investigating descending modulatory control of nociceptive transmission.

At Nottingham, Chapman leads a translational research programme examining peripheral and central sensitisation in chronic musculoskeletal pain. A major component of her work has involved the development and characterisation of experimental models of osteoarthritis pain, including chemically induced and surgically induced rodent models that reproduce progressive joint degeneration, altered weight bearing, mechanical hypersensitivity, and spontaneous pain behaviours. Using in vivo electrophysiology and behavioural pharmacology, her group investigates how osteoarthritic pathology alters spinal dorsal horn neuronal activity, peripheral afferent sensitisation, and descending inhibitory pathways over disease progression.

Her research has provided important mechanistic insights into the contribution of endocannabinoid signalling, TRPV1 channels, inflammatory mediators, and neuroimmune interactions in osteoarthritis pain states. By integrating preclinical models with quantitative sensory testing and translational human studies, Chapman’s work aims to identify predictive biomarkers and novel analgesic targets for stratified pain therapeutics in osteoarthritis.

Eva Kosek Karolinska Institute
Sweden

Eva Kosek, MD, PhD is holding positions as full Professor of Clinical Pain Research at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm and at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. She is a senior consultant at the Pain Centre at Uppsala University Hospital and has been clinically active for the most part of her professional carrier.

Prof. Kosek’s research focuses on pathophysiological mechanisms in chronic musculoskeletal pain, with special reference to central pain modulation and neuroinflammation in fibromyalgia, chronic low back pain, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. The research is hypothesis driven and her research groups use a wide variety of techniques such as genetics, analysis of inflammatory substances in cerebrospinal fluid and blood, quantitative sensory testing and neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography). She has published over 100 original scientific articles, H-index 66, cited > 20 000 times (average 100/item). She has lectured at conferences and symposia worldwide.

Prof. Kosek was an elected Councilor of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) 2012-18 and has chaired the IASP Terminology Task Force 2012-2022. She lead the IASP Task Force work on nociplastic pain, which resulted in IASP adapting the term as a third mechanistic descriptor and the publishing of clinical criteria for nociplastic pain manifesting in the musculoskeletal system.

David Rice Auckland University of Technology & Health New Zealand Waitematā
New Zealand

David is a physiotherapist with a PhD in clinical neurophysiology. He is a full Professor in the School of Allied Health, and a member of the Pain and Musculoskeletal Conditions Research Group at Auckland University of Technology. For over a decade, he has also held a joint position in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at North Shore Hospital in Auckland. David has research interests in the neuromuscular consequences and management of joint injury and arthritis, persistent postsurgical pain and enhanced recovery after surgery. He has received several national and international research awards and is ranked among the top 2% of scientists in the world. David is a former President of the New Zealand Pain Society, and outgoing Co-Chair of the Musculoskeletal Pain special interest group of IASP.

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