Clinical Social Workers: Lightening the Patient's Burden
Improving Patients' Quality of Life Through Pain Relief
Making New Neurons With Stem Cells
KEEP US INFORMED:
Please send us your comments on this issue, ideas for future issues, and news about your professional interests and accomplishments.
Al Dorof, Editor
adorof@brynmawr.edu
info@brynmawr.edu
©2008
Improving Patients' Quality of Life Through Pain Relief
 |
Christine Nai-Mei Sang '84 |
As director of the Translational Pain Research Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Christine Nai-Mei Sang '84 evaluates new drugs for pain and studies the causes of different types of pain with the goal of improving therapy and, ultimately, patients' quality of life.
"Everything that our group has been working on," she says, "fits in with a longer-term goal—to ultimately discover new drugs to relieve pain and suffering." As a clinical researcher, she works with patients experiencing peripheral and central neuropathic pain.
Yet when Sang entered Bryn Mawr College, she did not plan to go to medical school. "I grew up in New York and attended the United Nations International School until I went to boarding school at Milton Academy," she says. She enjoyed anthropology and English as well as science, "so in fact I had no idea what to major in," she recalls. "Medicine hadn't really entered my mind—my father had been an economist with the United Nations and World Bank, so I thought that I would try to find a mechanism by which I could also serve the international community. It was my mother who suggested that I choose a major that could sharpen my mind and have broad applications, so I chose mathematics. It was the perfect choice."
Sang's undergraduate experience inspired her to consider a career in medicine. "Bryn Mawr helped me to develop the confidence to pursue any endeavor," she says. "Every student at Bryn Mawr College was encouraged to try to achieve her potential. It was a place where I was able to thrive."
Making a Difference
Sang received her medical degree at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She completed her clinical training in anesthesiology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and held a clinical fellowship in pediatric anesthesia at Children's Hospital, Boston (where she still practices one day per week). She continued her postgraduate clinical research training at Harvard Medical School and the National Institutes of Health. She was drawn to anesthesiology, she says, because it is "a field that encompasses pharmacology, physiology, and technology, where during the course of the day one can generate lots of scientific questions to pursue. It's a wonderful field for anyone interested in basic or clinical research. Academic anesthesia, and specifically research in pain mechanisms, provides a great opportunity to make a difference in our patients' lives."
Sang also earned a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University. "In medical school I had developed an interest in clinical research, specifically in epidemiology and biostatistics," she explains, "and I was looking for more formal training."
Sang previously served as associate medical director of the Pain Research Clinic at NIH and director of the clinical trials program at the Massachusetts General Hospital Pain Center. Currently, as director of the Translational Pain Research Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital, she oversees a medical student and postdoc, a study coordinator, a study nurse, a research associate, an administrator, and a data manager. "I am proud of my team, their efforts, and their work in the spinal-cord injury and pain communities," she says. "We are dedicated to finding new treatments for refractory pain syndromes."
Sang received the Seymour Diamond Headache Award from the National Headache Foundation. She has both participated in and organized consensus conferences in neuropathic pain, neurofibromatosis, and spinal-cord injury. She has been involved in the establishment of practice guidelines for the American Society of Anesthesiologists. She also is a director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, the founding chairman of its Medical Advisory Committee as well as a founding member of the Neuropathic Pain Institute, and a former director of the American Pain Society. She also serves as a Special Government Employee (consultant) with the Food and Drug Administration.
Investigating Novel Drugs
Sang's research has been funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the Utley Foundation. She and her colleagues are investigating how new drugs affect different pain mechanisms, since standard analgesic treatments for central and peripheral neuropathic pain have provided inadequate pain relief for a large proportion of patients with chronic pain. "I rely on my collaborations, particularly with those whose work is in animal models of pain, to pursue research projects whose results we can translate to human trials," she says.
Sang's research has found that glutamate-receptor antagonists are analgesic in central neuropathic pain following spinal-cord injury. Another significant finding from her lab was that the use of clinical biomarkers can improve the ability of small clinical trials to detect the effects of potential analgesics.
Sang's research group strives to bring laboratory research into a safe and effective clinical setting, she says. "The majority of drugs that look promising in animal models of pain never make it to humans, and likewise the majority of drugs that are tested in humans do not make it to market, for a variety of reasons," she says. "These reasons range, in part, from methodological issues to inadequate doses to inactive drugs to safety concerns." As a researcher, she says, she expects these inevitable setbacks. "However, maintaining safety and tolerability for our patients is never frustrating," she says. "It is the most important part of our work."
Barbara Spector writes on science and technology as well as business topics. She is the editor-in-chief of Family Business magazine and former editor of The Scientist.