Challenges in Design and Interpretation of Clinical Trials in Pain Medicine

Steven Cohen earned his medical degree from Mount Sinai, followed by an anesthesiology residency at Columbia University and a pain fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. A retired U.S. Army Colonel, he has been deployed four times in support of operations in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Currently, Cohen is the inaugural Edmond I. Eger Professor of Anesthesiology, Vice Chair of Research and Pain Medicine, and a professor across multiple disciplines at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. He also serves as Director of Pain Research and Professor at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Previously, he has also held a faculty position at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Cohen’s groundbreaking research has been published in top medical journals, including The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, and The New England Journal of Medicine. From 2021 to 2023, ExpertScape ranked him as one of the top global chronic pain experts. He is also the Principal Investigator on the largest NIH HEAL study and multiple federally funded multicenter trials. Beyond his research, Cohen is also the President-Elect of ASRA-Pain Medicine, the largest pain organization in the U.S.

Luana Colloca is an NIH-funded physician-scientist who conducted ground-breaking studies that have advanced scientific understanding of the psychoneurobiological bases of endogenous systems for pain modulation in humans including the discovery that the vasopressin system is involved in the enhancement of placebo effects with a dimorphic effect. Currently, her team conducts basic and translational research on genomics of orofacial chronic pain, brain mechanisms of expectancy - and observationally-induced hypoalgesia - and immersive virtual reality. Her research has been published in top-ranked international journals including Biological Psychiatry, Pain, Nature Neuroscience, JAMA, Lancet Neurology, Science and NEJM. The impact of her innovative work is clear from her outstanding publications, citation rate, numerous invited lectures worldwide and media featured by The National Geographic, The New Scientist, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The New Yorker, Nature, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, News and World Reports.