Chronic pain is a disabling disease with limited treatment options that is characterized by pervasive dysfunction throughout the neuroaxis. This paper is a call to action for the pain field to harness technological advances on multiple fronts to create a Human Cells and Networks of Pain (HCNP) Consortium.
We envision the creation of collaborative centers that would focus on: 1) patient pain phenotyping with paired surgical specimen acquisition, 2) tissue collection and banking from organ donors with fast autopsy for cell culture and multi-omic analysis, and 3) sample and data analysis, integration, and distribution.
This large-scale consortium could achieve the goal of creating the basic science clinical bridge that is needed to transform decades of scientific discovery into next-generation treatments for chronic pain.

Renthal W, Chamessian A, Curatolo M, Davidson S, Burton M, Dib-Hajj S, Dougherty PM, Ebert AD, Gereau RW 4th, Ghetti A, Gold MS, Hoben G, Menichella DM, Mercier P, Ray WZ, Salvemini D, Seal RP, Waxman S, Woolf CJ, Stucky CL, Price TJ. Human cells and networks of pain: Transforming pain target identification and therapeutic development. Neuron. 2021 May 5;109(9):1426-1429. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.04.005. PMID: 33957072.