New developments in the pharmacological management of chronic pain: Problems and possibilities

Chas is an invited expert on several government and charitable research funding bodies, and an advisor for many academic, biotech and pharma drug discovery programmes.

Chas was Vice President and Head of Biology at GlaxoSmithKline. He was involved in the identification of more than 40 clinical candidates for many gastro-intestinal, inflammatory and neuro-psychiatric diseases. More than 20 of these molecules progressed into patient studies and more than five of these delivered successful “Proof of Concept” data and hence progressed into late stage development. He was involved in the launch and development of the first treatment for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (Alosetron) and was the first to show that neurokinin NK1 antagonists are anti-emetic in preclinical and clinical studies.

At NC State University College of Veterinary Medicine, he organizes the Integrated Pain Management Service, and runs the Comparative Pain Research Program and is Associate Director of the Comparative Medicine Institute and Directs the Clinical Studies Core. 

He is board-certified in small animal surgery by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the European College of Veterinary Surgeons, and the American College of Veterinary Surgeons.  His research is focused on developing algometry methods in spontaneous disease animal models, and probing tissues from well-phenotyped animals with spontaneous disease to understand the neurobiology. The aim of his research is to improve pain control in companion animals and facilitate analgesic development in human medicine.

His work on pre-emptive analgesia, opioid use in cats, perioperative NSAIDs, outcome measures in canine OA and feline DJD has had significant impact on the way veterinary medicine is practiced.

He has made seminal contributions to understanding the mechanisms of pain and how pain can be controlled in both normal and patho-physiological conditions and how to translate basic science to the patient. He has supervised 18 completed PhD students and makes a major contribution to undergraduate science and medical teaching. He is a founding and continuing member of the London Pain Consortium, a Wellcome Trust Integrated Physiology Initiative and now a Strategic Award, funding a group of scientists in London and Oxford studying pain mechanisms and training young scientists in integrated approaches to the study of pain from genes to function. He is training director of the programme. Prof. Dickenson was a member of the Council of the International Association for the Study of Pain for 6 years and is an associate editor for the journal Pain. He is a regular assessor of grant applications for the MRC, BBSRC, Wellcome Trust, Human Frontiers Programme and is a member of the research committee of INSERM, France.

He has been a member of the Medical Research Council Postgraduate Assessment Committee, the Brain Research Association National Committee, The International Association for the Study of Pain, Scientific Commission and the UK Pain Society Executive Committee as well as the Scientific commission of the European Federation of Pain Societies.

He has authored more than 250 refereed publications including Science and Nature, edited 3 books and written numerous chapters. He has made many media appearances including BBC1, 2 and Channel 4 and spoken at the Royal Institution.

Prof. Dickenson has given plenary lectures at the World Congress on Pain, the European Pain Congress, the US National Pain Forum and numerous Pain Societies including the ASEAN, American, Canadian, Belgium, Scandinavian, British, Thailand, Irish and the Australian Pain Societies and at many other international and national meetings. He also speaks to GPs, at hospices and to schools. He was elected into the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2007 and was made an Honorary Member of the British Pain Society in 2009 for ‘an outstanding contribution to the alleviation of pain through personal endeavour and through his work for the Society’.

Dr Bannister graduated from UCL in 2003 with a BSc in Pharmacology (first class honours) before completing a Master of Research and subsequent PhD in Epigenetics at Imperial College London. In 2008 Kirsty began a post-doctoral placement back at UCL in the Neuropharmacology of Pain laboratory, investigating neural and pharmacological systems that sub-serve pain transmission and modulation in the spinal cord and brain. Kirsty joined King’s College London in the autumn of 2017 on a permanent basis as a Lecturer in Pharmacology and Principal Investigator. Her interests remain to investigate how pain can be controlled in both normal and pathological conditions, and how to translate basic science to the patient.

His research focuses on pathophysiological and molecular mechanisms in human sensory neuropathies and chronic pain syndromes. Collaborations with colleagues and pharmaceutical companies are directed to projects which bridge the gap between pre-clinical developments and their successful clinical applications.  The translational approach has guided the recent success of 4 novel drugs from the laboratory to Phase II trials for chronic neuropathic pain and itch.  He has over 200 peer-reviewed publications in journals including Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, Science and The Lancet.