Interdisciplinary Mechanistic Research Centers (MJA Healthcare Consortium MRC)

Despite The Pipeline For New Pharmacologic Treatments For Chronic Lower Back Pain (CLBP) Which Includes Agents Targeting Inflammation, There Are Currently No Consistently Effective And Durable Pharmacologic Interventions For CLBP That Work. Clearly, More Rigorous Studies Are Needed That Better Integrate Different Modalities, And Development Of Individualized Treatment Plans. In Addition, A Better Means Of Identifying Sources Of Pain In Different Individuals Is A Crucial Need As Is The Need For Patient Stratification And Improved Outcomes Measures. This Is Also The Case For Non-Pharmacologic Interventions Such As Exercise, Multidisciplinary Rehabilitation, Acupuncture, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), And Mind-Body Practices. The MJA Healthcare Consortium For Back Pain Will Build On Research To Address The Opioid Crisis And Provide Safer Therapies For People With Pain.

20 researchers and pioneers from academia, private practice and domestic and international hospitals and laboratories will comprise the backbone of the MRC. They will conduct technology development and deployment so as to enable the goal of conducting translational research leading to further characterization of low back pain mechanisms and improved phenotyping of patients with chronic low back pain in clinical cohorts.

Aim: Centers will conduct exploratory trials or innovative design clinical studies to obtain data for deep patient phenotyping or test new technologies.

MRC will provide system level analysis for multidimensional datasets to produce an integrated model of LBP.
MRC will use data from clinical studies across the Consortium, to develop patient- centered algorithms for prediction of optimized therapeutic interventions.

The Research Program will focus on translational and clinical research for discovery of chronic low back pain (cLBP) mechanisms by (a) identification and testing of new interventions targeted to individual patients and (b) utilization of novel analytics and technologies to extensively phenotype patients with low back pain to produce new and improved diagnostic and treatment algorithms.

The Mechanistic Research Center (MRC) Consortium will include multiple

• Mechanistic Research Centers,
• Technology Research Sites, and a
• Data Integration, Algorithm Development and Operations Management Center.