One in five European adults lives with chronic pain, and current treatments often fail them. This project trains 15 doctoral researchers to develop a new class of non-pharmacological therapies based on a specific idea: that persistent pain arises from maladaptive patterns of electrical activity in the brain, and that non-invasive brain stimulation can correct those patterns. The problem is that we lack mechanistic understanding of how brain oscillations relate to pain, and we lack the skilled scientists to bridge that gap. FRESCO4NoPain unites experts in pain neuroscience, preclinical models, human studies, and clinical trials to train a generation of researchers who can move from fundamental insight to bedside application. MedTech companies are embedded in the network to ensure that new devices and protocols are developed with real-world use in mind. If successful, the project could deliver non-pharmacological therapeutic concepts for chronic pain that are grounded in brain mechanisms rather than trial and error. This would directly affect the millions of people whose daily lives are constrained by persistent pain, reducing reliance on opioids and other drugs with significant side effects.
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Chronic pain is a major societal and economic European burden, affects one in five adults, and its inadequate relief indicates a major unmet need for effective and mechanism-based non-pharmacological treatments. In FRESCO4NoPain, we propose that maladaptive brain oscillatory activity is associated with persistent pain, and that non-invasive brain neuromodulation may provide a novel treatment strategy. For this, mechanistic insight is needed. We see this as the perfect opportunity to unite world-leading experts in pain neuroscience to train 15 uniquely skilled Doctoral Candidates (DCs) who will become the future generation of pain scientists, fully equipped to address unmet challenges within chronic pain. The DCs will be integrated in a one-of-a-kind network-wide training infrastructure conducting frontline research on non-invasive brain stimulation that targets persistent pain based on i) preclinical studies of the relevant brain circuitries, ii) human studies of the involved mechanisms, and iii) clinical studies. Through FRESCO4NoPain, DCs will access a unique set of basic, experimental, and clinical disciplines in both academic and non-academic settings, tied together by synergistic collaborations across the network. An application-based and patient-oriented mindset will permeate the consortium via the active involvement of cutting-edge MedTech companies, knowledge actors and end-users. Only such a truly interdisciplinary and intersectoral approach can provide the necessary ecosystem to go beyond the state-of-the-art, promote disruptive thinking while developing new methods that overcome current technological barriers in the complex field of interdisciplinary pain neuroscience. FRESCO4NoPain will deliver on urgently needed non-pharmacological therapeutic concepts for chronic pain and build on fundamental scientific insights regarding the role of neuronal oscillations in the brain processing of pain, thereby potentially helping millions of people with chronic pain.
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