Centre for Pain Medicine & Palliative Care

As the population ages, surgery, degenerative diseases and arthritis account for an increasing load of pain and suffering in the community. This has an emotional, social and financial impact on the patient, family and society. The Centre for Pain Medicine and Palliative Care, established in January 2007, aims to take a holistic approach to these disciplines, to ensure clinicians treat all symptoms.

Scientists working in the Centre undertake multimodal and multidisciplinary approaches to their research. The multimodal approach involves scientists investigating the myriad of chemicals in the human body that sense pain. The research team is currently aiming to identify different combinations of these chemicals that have the greatest potential to block pain. These findings could potentially be used to develop new pain therapies.

The multidisciplinary approach to pain medicine and palliative care requires an understanding that pain is as much sensory and emotional as it is physical.

Centre Director Professor Colin Goodchild is also the Research Director and Chief Scientific Officer for CNS Bio, a Monash University pharmaceutical biotech company that aims to develop new pain therapies. These close ties will lead to collaborative research that translates laboratory-based findings into clinical trials for debilitating conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, cancer and HIV.