Project Sumary: For many years in the field of pain medicine it has been noted that many promising treatments emerging from animal studies fail to demonstrate efficacy in human trials. There are many reasons for these phenomena and one of the key steps to improve this situation and establish more effective nonopioid treatments for pain is more rigorous conduct of multisite pain clinical trials from an experienced multidisciplinary team of investigators. The University of Pittsburgh Hub and Spoke Clinical Trials Network is well-positioned to take on this role and integrate with EPPIC-NET. The most important aspects of our network which will make us successful are the quality of the site investigators involved and their long track record of working together successfully on many different types of projects. As a group we have a history of taking on scientific tasks and getting projects done with excellent performance. Our strengths in doing “team science” are perhaps what stands out the most in this proposal. We will establish our organizational structure to capitalize on the expertise at our Spokes and when most appropriate use this expertise to lead specific trials. This approach will provide us the flexibility to take on a wide range of EPPIC-NET trials and duties, as well as be a mechanism to train younger pain clinical researchers in the conduct of rigorous, collaborative, and multisite studies.

Project Narrative: The University of Pittsburgh Hub and Spoke Clinical Trial Network is composed of a team of multidisciplinary experts in the field of Pain Medicine with extensive experience conducting pain clinical trials. In this proposal will describe how we are well-suited to perform multisite clinical trials and poised to train junior pain clinical trial investigators.