Winners of EFIC-Grünenthal-Grant announced

Supporting Young Scientists on the Subject of Pain Research

For the 8^th time the European Federation of IASP® Chapters (EFIC®) in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company Grünenthal Group announced the EFIC-Grünenthal-Grant (E-G-G) - a grant aimed to support young scientists at an early stage of their experimental projects on clinical and human volunteer-based pain research.

The importance of the EFIC-Grünenthal-Grant is to support promising scientists at a critical phase of their early career when independent financial and logistic support is often difficult to obtain. The biennial grant totalling 200,000 Euro will be divided between the winning projects; individual grants are valued at up to 40,000 Euro per project. The importance of supporting pain research is underlined by the diversity of topics - basic and clinical human pain research still has many facets and unanswered questions - and the rising number of applications: 80 young scientists have submitted their promising research proposals on the subject of pain for an EFIC-Grünenthal-Grant 2012.

The E-G-G 2012

The winners of the E-G-G 2012 have been independently selected by the EFIC® Committee on Scientific Research. From the vast number of applications, these seven clinical and human experimental research projects of very high standard were chosen from five European countries:

• Nociceptive nerve endings as a target for autoantibodies.

Jordi CASANOVA-MOLLA (Spain)

• Visuospatial adaption with prisms in stroke-related complex regional pain syndrome: acting on pain or neglect?

Samar HATEM (Belgium)

• A longitudinal study on chronic pain, anxiety and depression.

Lannie LIGTHART (Netherlands)

• Fear generalization as a pathway to chronic widespread pain.

Ann MEULDERS (Belgium)

• Imaging grey and white matter pathology in central post-stroke pain with MRI.

Till SPRENGER (Germany)

• "Pain engrams": psychophysiologic investigations of memory traces of nociceptive information.

Elia VALENTINI (Italy)

• Defining peripheral and central pathophysiology and heritable susceptibility factors of ciguatera-associated cold allodynia

Katharina ZIMMERMANN (Germany)

"We are proud to announce the winners of the E-G-G 2012. This year, due to the vast number of applications, the EFIC® Committee on Scientific Research mastered a difficult task in finding the winners. Out of 80 applications - most of a very high standard - from various European countries we chose seven fantastic and interesting projects. The aspiration of the grant scheme is to kick-start research that will be sustainable through future competitive funding from other sources. Therefore, we are curious about the realization and findings of these seven projects and pleased to support them."  Prof Martin Koltzenburg (Chair of EFIC® Committee on Scientific Research) proudly reveals.

Awarding in Florence

The winners of the E-G-G 2012 will be presented with their awards on the occasion of the Opening Ceremony of the 8^th EFIC® Congress "PAIN IN EUROPE VIII" (9^th-12^th October 2013, Florence, Italy).

Moreover, former winners of the E-G-G 2010 will give insights into their awarded projects presenting the progress and results at the EFIC® Symposium "New Findings in Clinical Pain Research - Results of the EFIC®-GRÜNENTHAL Grants 2010" at the EFIC® Congress in Florence on October 10^th 17:45 - 19:15 h.