Funded Projects

NOFO Title: HEAL Initiative: Sleep and Circadian-Dependent Mechanisms Contributing to Opiate Use Disorder (OUD) and Response to Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) (R01 - Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
NOFO Number: RFA-HL-19-028
Summary:

Repetitive drug use forms powerful memories associating drug-evoked experiences with its proximal environmental cues. Memories are major obstacles for successfully treating addiction, since even after a prolonged period of abstinence, reexposure to such cues often triggers craving that promotes relapse. A polysynaptic pathway from the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) to the lateral hypothalamus (LH) has been shown to play a role in the maintenance of the opioid-associated memories. Hypocretin (Hcrt) neurons in the LH strongly innervate the PVT, required for maintaining wakefulness and involved in drug seeking. These factors may link sleep disorders in opioid addicts with their long-lasting drug-associated memories. This study will (1) determine whether Hcrt neurons in the LH are the major target; (2) examine whether manipulating the LH (Hcrt)-PVT pathway can effectively prevent relapse; and (3) test whether sleep intervention could be an effective strategy to prevent relapse.

NOFO Title: HEAL Initiative: Development of Therapies and Technologies Directed at Enhanced Pain Management (R43/R44 - Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
NOFO Number: RFA-NS-20-011
Summary:

Thoracic (chest) surgeries often cause both short-term (acute) and long-term (chronic) pain and long-term opioid use. Unique genetic and clinical risk factors affect individual responses to surgical pain and pain medications. Current trial-and-error approaches to managing post-surgical pain and opioid prescribing are not ideal. This project will develop predictive software within a medical device that takes into account an individual’s genetic and clinical information to predict the likelihood of chronic pain following thoracic surgery. 

NOFO Title: HEAL Initiative: Advancing Health Equity in Pain Management (R61/R33 Clinical Trial Required)
NOFO Number: NS22-002
Summary:

This research project will include focus group interviews with clinicians, patients, medical interpreters, and healthcare administrators to identify barriers and facilitators to administering the GetActive+ intervention in a group visit at a clinic for older adults with chronic pain, to inform development of a therapy manual. The project will then test the GetActive+ intervention for changes in physical function immediately post-intervention and after 6 months, as well as for changes in pain, sleep, depression, and anxiety at both time points. This research will also assess feasibility, acceptability, fidelity, and adoption of the intervention with patients, providers, and healthcare staff. 

NOFO Title: Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Encourage Eligible NIH HEAL Initiative Awardees to Apply for Administrative Supplements to Support Career Enhancement Related to Clinical Research on Pain
NOFO Number: NOT-NS-22-087
Summary:

This project supports a post-doctoral trainee to develop the skills and knowledge needed to pursue a career in clinical pain research. The research will involve optimizing a GetActive mind-body activity program to overcome barriers that prevent disadvantaged older adult populations in community health clinics from access to non-pharmacological pain management strategies. The research will include qualitative analysis of secondary data, a literature review to evaluate methods, and feasibility for establishing a community advisory board for the GetActive project.

NOFO Title: HEAL Initiative: Pragmatic and Implementation Studies for the Management of Pain to Reduce Opioid Prescribing (PRISM)(UG3/UH3 Clinical Trial Optional)
NOFO Number: RFA-AT-19-004
Summary:

Prescriptions for narcotic pain relief after surgery result in unintended prolonged opioid use for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Nonpharmacological pain care is effective and recommended by guidelines for perioperative pain while offering a more favorable risk-benefit ratio. However, nonpharmacological pain care is rarely used as first or second-line therapy after surgery. Patient and clinician decision support interventions are effective in encouraging patient-centered and guideline-concordant care, but these strategies have not been tested pragmatically as a bundle in everyday postoperative pain care. The NOHARM trial will first confirm the feasibility of patient-facing and clinician-facing decision support components of an EHR-embedded evidence-based bundle. The investigators will test the bundle in a stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial. They will test a sustainable system strategy that could change the paradigm of perioperative pain management toward nonpharmacological options in a manner that preserves patient function, honors patient values, and maintains availability of opioids as a last resort.

NOFO Title: Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)
NOFO Number: PA-18-591
Summary:

Substance use disorders (SUDs) can have devastating consequences for people with serious mental illness (SMI). SUDs can increase morbidity and mortality and are associated with higher healthcare and social costs, homelessness, and incarceration. Unfortunately, despite the availability of effective treatments, most individuals with co-occurring SMI and SUD (COD) never receive SUD treatment. We propose to evaluate system, provider, and patient-level facilitators and barriers and develop an implementation strategy and toolkit to promote the use of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for people with COD. Aims 1–3 seek to assess organizational capacity (at the system and provider level); organizational readiness (at the provider level); and perceived needs, attitudes, and preferences (at the patient level) to identify barriers and facilitators. In Aim 4, we will use findings from Aims 1–3 to guide development of the implementation strategy and toolkit, using stakeholder input and a systematic process for strategy development.

NOFO Title: Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)
NOFO Number: PA-18-591
Summary:

Social big data analysis of publicly available user data on social media platforms is a promising approach for attaining organic observations of behavior that can monitor and predict real-world public health problems, such as HIV incidence. In preliminary research, our team identified and collected tweets suggesting HIV risk behaviors (e.g., drug use, high-risk sexual behaviors), modeled them alongside CDC statistics on HIV diagnoses, and found a significant positive relationship between HIV-related tweets and county-level HIV cases. We propose to create a single automated platform that collects social media data, identifies and labels tweets that suggest HIV-related behaviors, and predicts regional HIV incidence. We will interview staff and participants at local and regional HIV organizations to understand ethical issues associated with mining people’s data. The software developed from this application will be shared with HIV researchers and health care workers to combat the spread of HIV.

NOFO Title: Development of Vaccines for the Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder
NOFO Number: BAA-DAIT-75N93019R00009
Summary:

High rates of relapse and overdose deaths pose significant challenges to the treatment of Opioid Use Disorder (OUD). Anti-opioid immunotherapies (i.e., vaccines and monoclonal antibodies) have great potential to reduce long-term opioid use and overdose, with minimal risk of side effects, when used in conjunction with pharmacological treatments and/or behavioral therapies. The ability of an anti-opioid vaccine to induce antibodies that render an opioid less effective, or less rewarding, and protect from accidental overdose could provide an important therapeutic option for patients undergoing treatment for OUD. The goal of this collaborative study is to design, develop, and evaluate vaccines for use in the treatment of opioid use disorder

NOFO Title: HEAL Initiative: Back Pain Consortium (BACPAC) Research Program: Mechanistic Research Centers (U19 Clinical Trial Optional)
NOFO Number: RFA-AR-19-026
Summary:

The University of Pittsburgh Low Back Pain: Biological, Biomechanical, and Behavioral Phenotypes (LB3P) Mechanistic Research Center (MRC) will to perform in-depth phenotyping of patients with chronic low back pain (cLBP), using a multimodal approach to characterize patients and provide insight into the phenotypes associated with experience of cLBP to direct targeted and improved treatments. The LB3P MRC will be formed of three Research Cores, three support cores, and one research project. This approach will leverage and integrate distinctive resources at the University of Pittsburgh laboratories to deliver quantified biomechanical, biological, and behavioral characteristics; functional assessments; and patient-reported outcomes, coupled with advanced data analytics using a novel Network Phenotyping Strategy (NPS). By eliminating isolated and disconnected approaches to treatment and focusing on personalized patient-centric approaches, this approach will yield improved outcomes and patient satisfaction.

NOFO Title: Notice of Special Interest to Encourage Eligible NIH HEAL Initiative Awardees to Apply for PA-20-222: Research Supplements to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research (Admin Supp - Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
NOFO Number: NOT-NS-20-107
Summary:

Knee osteoarthritis is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, particularly among older adults. Despite multiple guidelines for care, most patients do not receive adequate treatment, and about 30% are prescribed long-term opioids. This award will be used to recruit and support an early career faculty member from a group underrepresented in biomedicine. This research, part of the Pain Management Effectiveness Research Network will evaluate conservative and more aggressive treatments for knee osteoarthritis and determine which individual-level factors contribute to treatment outcomes.

NOFO Title: Notice of Special Interest to Encourage Eligible NIH HEAL Initiative Awardees to Apply for Administrative Supplements to Promote Training in Clinical Research on Pain (Admin Supp ? Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
NOFO Number: NOT-NS-20-044
Summary:

Chronic low back pain is difficult to diagnose and treat effectively in part, because of the interplay of biophysical and psychosocial influences that complicate the relationship between impairment, disability, and pain. Psychological factors such as fear of movement and catastrophyzing can lead to compensatory movement patterns that affect movement biomechanics and paraspinal structure and function, driving further impairment, disrupting the balance between passive and active spine stabilizers, and reinforcing the patient?s perceived disability status. This study will support research to determine how psychological factors, spinal pathology, and perception of pain severity and disability status influence compensatory movement strategies, how movement biomechanics, psychological factors, and pain mechanisms relate to paraspinal muscle quality, and their relative changes during treatment. The supplement will provide training opportunities for skills in clinical pain management research.

NOFO Title: PHS 2017-02 Omnibus Solicitation of the NIH, CDC, and FDA for Small Business Innovation Research Grant Applications (Parent SBIR [R43/R44])
NOFO Number: PA-17-302
Summary:

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are a first line pharmacologic pain therapy for chronic musculoskeletal pain, and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and moderate to severe osteoarthritis (OA) specifically. However, insufficient pain relief by NSAID monotherapy has encouraged the use of combination therapy. Combinations of NSAIDs plus weak opioids are widely used although objective evidence for efficacy is limited and they have many adverse events.  A growing body of evidence suggests that ?2/?3 subtype-selective positive allosteric modulators (PAM) of the ?- aminobutyric acid A receptor (GABAAR) may effectively restore central pain regulatory mechanisms thus providing effective relief of chronic pain with reduced prevalence and severity of side-effects.  Based on these promising preliminary studies and considerable supporting literature data, the research team will test the hypothesis that combination dosing of TPA-023B with an NSAID will work synergistically to suppress the acute and chronic pain components of chronic musculoskeletal pain. 

NOFO Title: HEAL Initiative: Back Pain Consortium (BACPAC) Research Program: Mechanistic Research Centers (U19 Clinical Trial Optional)
NOFO Number: RFA-AR-19-026
Summary:

The UCSF Core Center for Patient-centric Mechanistic Phenotyping in Chronic Low Back Pain (UCSF REACH) is an interdisciplinary consortium of basic and clinical scientists dedicated to understanding and clarifying the biopsychosocial mechanisms of chronic low back pain (cLBP). The goal of REACH is to define cLBP phenotypes and pain mechanisms that can lead to effective, personalized treatments for patients across the population. UCSF REACH has six cores that will support a single research project that is focused on the challenge of developing validated and adoptable tools that enable comprehensive yet routine clinical assessment and treatment of cLBP patients. Overall, the object of REACH is to make optimum use of all available resources to catalyze discovery and translation of novel diagnostics and therapeutics that improve outcomes of cLBP patients.