# Center for chronic pain and drug abuse

> **NIH NIH P50** · NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $19,908

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The Pain Center is designed to study and enhance understanding of the mechanisms of chronic pain and
the interaction between opioid analgesia and opioid dependence. Our main goal is to build upon the
recent discovery that chronic pain is shaped by the same brain circuitry that controls opioid addiction.
We focus on pain, addiction, and opioid research in humans and in animals’ models. All projects are united
by the common goal to unravel how the mesocorticolimbic circuitry in chronic pain is reorganized by
repeated exposure to opioids, and how this plasticity shapes the analgesic and addictive properties of
opioids.
The Pain Center is composed of an interdisciplinary team of PIs. All of us have trained many graduate
students and post-doctoral fellows and takes very seriously our role in facilitating the career development
of the Pain Center students.
The NIDA supported summer students will be able to interact with a multidisciplinary team composed by
several post-doctoral fellows, graduate, undergraduate students and research assistants. There are
multiple opportunities for them to engage in both human and animal mechanistic studies. As these
summer students have no prior research experience, we will need to explore with them how and in what
capacity they can be engaged in the ongoing research of the Pain Center.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10400508
- **Project number:** 3P50DA044121-03S1
- **Recipient organization:** NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Apkar Vania Apkarian
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $19,908
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2018-09-01 → 2023-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10400508

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10400508, Center for chronic pain and drug abuse (3P50DA044121-03S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10400508. Licensed CC0.

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