University Times

The School of Medicine has established the Pittsburgh Center for Pain Research (PCPR) and has recruited an internationally recognized pain researcher, Gerald Gebhart, to head it.

PCPR is a collaboration of the School of Medicine’s departments of anesthesiology and neurobiology and the Department of Medicine’s Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. The school envisions that the new pain center will become one of the nation’s pre-eminent pain research centers.

Gebhart, who previously was professor and head of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Iowa’s College of Medicine, is one of the world’s foremost experts on the pharmacology and physiology of visceral pain — the pain one feels when internal organs are damaged or injured by trauma or disease. Visceral pain is one of the most common forms of pain, often caused by pancreatic cancer and tumors in the abdomen.

Gebhart’s work has been instrumental in uncovering the nervous system pathways and neurotransmitter systems that communicate pain in the viscera. He also has developed and improved upon a number of animal models of visceral pain, which are used by researchers worldwide.

PCPR is in the process of recruiting at least four new pain researchers. Much of the focus of their work will be on common clinical pain syndromes, including chronic pain, Gebhart said.

Gebhart received his doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Iowa and has held positions at the University of Montreal and the Physiology Institute at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

He has received numerous awards, including a five-year Bristol Myers Award for Excellence in Pain Research, a Method to Extend Research in Time Award from the National Institutes of Health, the Frederick W.L. Kerr Award from the American Pain Society, the Kappa Delta Elizabeth Winston-Lanier Award from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the John J. Bonica Award from the American Society for Regional Anesthesia. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Pain Society and Purdue Pharma Prize for Pain Research and recently received the Founders Award from the American Academy of Pain Medicine.

He has published more than 275 peer-reviewed papers and 50 book chapters.