# Harvard PRECISION Human Pain Center

> **NIH NIH U19** · BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL · 2024 · $2,574,551

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY (Overall)
Chronic pain affects >25 million Americans per year, with enormous impacts on both quality of life and
productivity. Despite advances in our understanding of nociception in animal models, new and effective
treatments for patients with chronic pain have been lacking. The poor translation between mouse and human
pain targets has highlighted limitations of animal models of pain. Recent advances in single-cell genomics and
physiology directly in human tissue position pain researchers to make important new advances with improved
opportunities for clinical translation. The Harvard PRECISION Human Pain Center proposes to leverage state-
of-the-art single-cell technologies to characterize human nociceptor subtypes and how their gene expression
patterns vary across diverse populations (Project 1) as well as in chronic pain conditions that clearly localize to
these cells – chronic phantom limb pain associated with painful neuromas (Project 2). The Projects will generate
a wealth of data for the scientific community by closely integrating with 5 Cores tasked with 1) procuring high-
quality human pain-related tissues following strict regulatory practices, 2) offering the latest single-cell gene
multi-omic technologies, 3) performing advanced single-cell spatial transcriptomic analysis, 4) managing,
integrating, and distributing all of the data, and 5) administrating and connecting to Center the other PRECISION
Human Pain Network Centers. The data generated by our Center will contribute to this broader PRECISION
Human Pain Network and to help identify and prioritizate of novel pain therapeutic targets for future investigation.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10928096
- **Project number:** 5U19NS130617-03
- **Recipient organization:** BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** William Russell Renthal
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $2,574,551
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-09-19 → 2027-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10928096

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10928096, Harvard PRECISION Human Pain Center (5U19NS130617-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10928096. Licensed CC0.

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