Useful Links & Videos

QSPainRelief’s first patient event took place as part of Pain Alliance Europe’s (PAE) annual General Assembly (GA) Meeting on 24 June 2020. QSPainRelief’s scientific coordinator, Prof. Dr. Liesbeth de Lange, presented the scope of our Horizon 2020-funded research project in a 20-minute-long presentation. The talk was well-received by the audience of laymen and European pain patient representatives from 19 different countries. Here, we share our introductory project video with students, the general public, and the patient community.

Effective combinational treatment of chronic pain by an innovative Quantitative Systems Pharmacology approach: In the series of interviews “Meet UniBo PhD Students”, we talked to Elisabetta Cuna, a third-year PhD student from the Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna. Currently engaged in the QSPainRelief project, a European-funded initiative, Elisabetta contributes to identifying more effective and safer combinations of existing drugs for chronic pain treatment using an innovative Quantitative Systems Pharmacology approach. Her academic journey reflects a commitment to advancing pharmaceutical biotechnology and addressing critical challenges in pain management. The video was produced by the Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology (UNIBO).

This is a brief video on how to fill out the patient questionnaire accompanying the clinical trial in patients suffering from persistent post-surgical pain (PPSP). It can be filled out online on a smartphone or computer. The clinical trial on up to 180 patients aims for improved pain relief in patients suffering from PPSP. It assesses the therapeutic effect of various combinations of pain medication. The real-world data collected in this trial is essential for “calibrating and fine-tuning” the developing QSPainRelief online platform. To that end, work package 8 (WP8) researchers conduct a clinical study on patients who suffer from post-surgical pain for more than two weeks after surgery to characterise the #treatment effects of different drug combinations and two common adverse effects, namely sedation and cognitive dysfunction. Using non-invasive biomarkers of central nervous system (CNS) activity, such as electroencephalogram (EEG) data, measurable CNS effects within pain-relevant neuronal networks are compared with the clinical therapeutic effects, and any adverse effects are self-reported by the patients. These self-reports, collected up to three months after treatment initiation, also include an assessment of potential pain medication misuse or addictive behaviour. Patients are recruited into the study at Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc (CUSL) in Bruxelles, Belgium, and tested at Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.