Two hundred years ago, surgery without pain seemed like a fantasy to people who needed everything from a tooth extracted to a leg amputated. Yet anesthesia was just around the corner, ready to transform medicine forever. Though anesthesia was groundbreaking, it showed that the goal is often not to eliminate sensation, but to manage pain precisely, keeping what’s beneficial and removing what isn’t. Now, epidurals and local anesthetics are routinely used to manage pain with precision, controlling its location, intensity, and duration to suit the specific needs of the patient.

Humanity may be on the verge of a similar breakthrough in medicine, where new nonaddictive drugs and gene therapies dramatically expand the means to address not only physical pain but other forms of emotional distress too, such as pathological anxiety and depression. This event will provide an introductory overview of the latest research and therapeutic development efforts targeting the neurological and genetic mechanisms underlying these challenges in humans and other species. It will cover options for screening against neurological pathologies in animals and the potential to further improve health and welfare. This event is being hosted by the Stanford EA student group. Special thanks to Creagh Factor and Tommy Ren for their help and support!

Kanwaljeet S. Anand is a translational clinical researcher who pioneered research on the endocrine-metabolic stress responses of infants undergoing surgery and developed the first-ever scientific rationale for pain perception in early life. This provided a framework for newer methods of pain assessment, numerous clinical trials of analgesia/anesthesia in newborns, infants, and older children. His research focus over the past 30+ years has contributed fundamental knowledge about pediatric pain/stress, long-term effects of pain in early life, management of pain, mechanisms for opioid tolerance and withdrawal. Current projects in his laboratory are focused on developing biomarkers for repetitive pain/stress in critically ill children and the mechanisms underlying sedative/anesthetic neurotoxicity in the immature brain. He designed and directed many randomized clinical trials and has extensive experience in clinical and translational research from participating in collaborative networks funded by NIMH, NINDS, or NICHD, while achieving success with large research teams like the Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network (CPCCRN). He played leadership roles in the projects of the Urban Child Institute and UT Neuroscience Institute. More recently, he led the NeoOpioid Consortium funded by the European Commission.

Eric Gross [invited, waiting confirmation] is a member of the Stanford Center for Asian Research and Education (CARE), Cardiovascular Research Institute, and Bio-X. He has an extensive background in biomedical engineering, pharmacology, a board-certified anesthesiologist, and funded by the NIH continuously since 2011. His research group is within the School of Medicine at Stanford University. Perioperative organ injury are acute organ injuries that occur while undergoing surgery including acute myocardial infarction, stroke, and gut, lung, and kidney injury. His laboratory research focuses on developing new models and cutting-edge strategies to better understand how genetic variants in Asians impact perioperative organ injury. In addition, his laboratory also focuses on how these genetic variants in Asians also impact exposures to alcohol and e-cigarettes.

Phillip Kyriakakis is a Senior Research Scientist in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University in the Wu Tsai Institute for Neuroscience. His research spans biochemistry, synthetic biology, imaging/microscopy, light-modulated biological systems, molecular biology/cloning, and cell (re)programming. Dr. Kyriakakis did his undergraduate work in Biochemistry at UMass Boston, where he also worked in Dr. Alexey Veraksa's developmental biology lab and started to develop PhyB optogenetics in animal cells (2008). Dr. Kyriakakis continued his education at UC San Diego, where he studied cellular programming and metabolism to obtain his degree with a specialization in Multiscale Biology. Dr. Kyriakakis did his postdoctoral work in the university’s Bioengineering Department with Todd Coleman, continuing the development of optogenetic tools and related technologies. In 2021, Dr. Kyriakakis moved to his current role at Stanford University.

Ana Moreno is the CEO and founder of Navega Therapeutics. Chronic pain remains a critical challenge in both human and veterinary medicine, with current treatments often reliant on opioids that pose significant side effects and limited long-term efficacy. Dr. Moreno uses a targeted approach, which her team terms pain LATER (long-lasting analgesia via targeted epigenetic repression), holds significant promise for translation to veterinary species, including dogs, horses, and other animals, offering a sustainable and opioid-sparing solution for chronic pain management.

Cynthia Schuck-Paim has a PhD and post-doctoral degree in zoology (animal behavior and cognition) from Oxford University, and extensive experience in data analysis and global health research, especially in the areas of metrics and the effectiveness of interventions. She has developed several research projects for research institutions in the UK, USA and Brazil, and authored nearly 100 academic publications. Additionally, she has taught data analysis and experimental design for researchers in the biomedical field.

Jacob Shwartz-Lucas is the director of the Animal Pain Research Institute (APRI), dedicated to advancing genetic understanding of affective states like pain, anxiety, and depression across species. In 2024, he organized a cross-disciplinary workshop at Oxford University. In January, Jacob is hosting a workshop at PAG 32. He holds a Master's degree in molecular biology from the University of Skövde. He has been a visiting student researcher at Harvard and hosted shows airing on Stanford University Radio. While the other speakers will focus on pain, Jacob will also cover other affective states.

Devjit Srivastava is an anesthesia and pain medicine consultant at NHS Highland. He gained considerable attention through his work with Jo Cameron, a woman with a rare genetic mutation that makes her resistant to seemingly all negative experiences. Dr. Srivastava's collaboration with geneticists and other medical professionals in investigating Cameron's unique condition has contributed to a deeper understanding of pain pathways and potential future treatments for clinically excessive distress. His clinical work and research continue to advance the field of anesthesiology and pain medicine. Most recently, the Faculty of Pain Medicine at the Royal College of Anaesthetists awarded Dr. Srivastava its highly valued commendation award for his work to improve pain management care in the UK.

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There are limited tickets available given the space restrictions. So, please register now to secure a spot. We can move to a larger room, provided we have a long wait list far in advance.