ABSTRACT
Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Pain: Aligning the Target, organized by Drs.
Laura M. Bohn, William K. Schmidt and Allan I. Basbaum. The conference will be held in Keystone, Colorado
from February 2-5, 2020.
The Keystone Symposia on Pain: Aligning the Target will bring together researchers from diverse disciplines to
examine the complex problem of pain and to shed light on mechanistic underpinnings and molecular
approaches towards treatment. Topics will range from understanding neurotransmission and the anatomy of
pain, structural features of molecular targets for modulating pain, and novel approaches, including drug
development, optogenetic and genetic approaches to controlling pain. Most conferences on pain discuss pain
management (clinical focus), neuroanatomical transmission of pain (neuroscience), or the mechanism by
which analgesics/anesthetics work with a focus on particular molecular targets (pharmacology). Our goal is to
bring these disciplines together to aid in a more efficient design of preclinical studies and drug development by
educating each other in the individual challenges and offerings of our disciplines. Ultimately, this conference
should inspire researchers from diverse backgrounds to examine this fundamental health problem via many
new angles. Importantly, researchers that focus on the neurocircuitry and cause of pain and those that focus
on drug development for the treatment of pain generally are not generally attending the same conferences.
Finally, this conference is being paired with a related conference on Somatosensation: from Detection to
Perception, which will focus more on the neurobiology of pain sensation. There will be numerous opportunities
for participants to intermingle at poster sessions and dinners, enabling the cross-fostering of ideas.
Collectively, these events will provide a forum for the convergence of insights into the diverse causes of pain
and the approaches to treatment.