Challenges and Opportunities for High-Quality Fundamental Pain Research in Low- and Middle-Income Countries and Settings – A Brainstorming Panel Discussion

Lee Ji Kwan (Shawn) is a practicing clinical psychologist specialising in pain management. He is affiliated with Monash University, Malaysia, where he works as a lecturer. In addition, Shawn sits on the Board of Editorial Consultants for the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (IJCEH). Shawn has been working with patients with chronic pain in a multidisciplinary team since 2011 and has developed a deep passion for the psychological management of pain. At Monash University, Malaysia, Shawn’s teaching responsibilities include professional ethics and abnormal psychology.

Tory Madden is a clinical physiotherapist and researcher with a longstanding interest in human health, particularly in the processes that underlie persistent pain and learning. She works at the University of Cape Town as an Associate Professor in the Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine and the Neuroscience Institute and is involved in Groote Schuur Hospital’s interdisciplinary Chronic Pain Clinic. She holds a ‘Y’ scientist rating from the South African National Research Foundation and currently receives funding from the US National Institutes of Health, through a K43 Emerging Global Leader award. She aims to focus her research on identifying contributors to persistent pain that can be targeted therapeutically to decrease and prevent persistent pain.  Tory is active in several IASP task forces and councillor of the South African chapter of IASP.

Bamidele Victor Owoyele is a basic researcher in the field of pain and neuroscience. He specializes in neurophysiology, sensory neuroscience looking at pain transmission and factors that could mitigate it. Victor has been involved in evaluating the effects of the rich West African Flora as used traditionally on the amelioration of pain in rodent models of acute and chronic pain as well as inflammation. He is also involved in modeling neuroinflammatory diseases such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's, and in evaluating pain and inflammation in clinical settings with his collaborators. He is the President of the Society for the Study of Pain Nigeria (SSPN) and the Chair of the Fellowships Grants and Award Working Group of the IASP.

Pablo Brumovsky is Associate Professor in the Institute of Research in Translational Medicine, where he leads the lab of Mechanisms and Therapeutic Innovation in Pain. His lab is currently focused on the characterization of the mechanisms of anti-nociceptive and anti-inflammatory actions of the oligodeoxynucleotide IMT504, in particular in relation to its modulation of mesenchymal stromal cells and cells in the immune system. As such, the interaction between these non-neuronal cells and primary afferent and spinal neurons involved in the transmission of pain is also a focus of attention in his lab.  

Dr. Brumovsky is also Associate Dean at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences in Austral University, and an Editorial Committee member of the Pain Research Forum. He is currently the Chair of the Financial Aid Task Force of the IASP.