Massachusetts General Hospital is home to the largest hospital-based research enterprise in the U.S., with an annual budget of nearly $1.3 billion in 2022. The Mass General Research Institute comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments.
But what do each of these groups do? Learn more about the individual labs and centers in our #ThroughTheMagnifyingGlass series, where we take a closer look at the teams that make up the Massachusetts General Research Institute.
In this post, we are highlighting the Pain and Neuroinflammation Imaging Lab led by Marco Loggia, PhD!
What research do you perform, and why is it unique?
Our work is (mostly) focused on the study of how chronic pain affects the human brain.
We use advanced brain imaging techniques (including positron emission tomography, or PET, and magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI) to understand what brain changes occur in response to, or even precede, the development of chronic pain. We are also interested in understanding how some treatments–whether pharmacological or nonpharmacological– work, and why they work so well in some but not in others.
Our laboratory occupies a very unique “sweet spot” within MGH, because we are part of one of the world’s premiere brain imaging centers (the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging within the Department of Radiology), and one of the top anesthesia departments (the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine) at the same time! This gives us access to the most advanced brain imaging technology and the best clinical expertise. Although, of course, what truly makes our lab unique is our people.
The Pain and Neuroinflammation Imaging Lab is housed within the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology and the Department of Anesthesia. The lab is led by Marco Loggia, PhD, an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and Mass General.
Meet the Team
We are fortunate to work with people coming from all over the world (in today’s lineup: from Massachusetts to China, from Korea to Kansas, via Iran, Sweden and Italy). They bring to the lab all kinds of expertise and training (biomedical and chemical engineering, neuroscience, cognitive sciences, nursing, biology, etc) and personal interests (from woodwork to music, from cooking to sports).
This wonderful blend of people makes coming to the lab every day so much fun! Our lab has even spearheaded engaging and exciting creative initiatives aimed at bringing the community together, such as the “Martinos Cookbook” and the “Martinos Center’s Got Talent” event.
The adjective that best describes the way our lab works, cliché as it may sound, is “collaborative.” The members of our staff are always thrilled to train others (both within our institution, and beyond) in the use of the techniques we employ.
For instance, in the past decade our laboratory has focused a lot on the study of brain inflammation or “neuroinflammation,” a phenomenon that is of great interest to many fields (from neurology to psychiatry), but that has been historically quite tricky to study with widely available techniques.
While our lab mostly investigates the role of neuroinflammation in the context of chronic pain, we routinely help other investigators apply similar techniques to the study of its role in many other diseases. These collaborations, in turn, improve our science and its impact in the world.
What publication is really important to your ongoing research?
In our study, Evidence for Brain Glial Activation in Chronic Pain Patients, we showed for the first time that patients with a chronic pain condition (chronic low back pain) have elevated levels of a protein called “translocator protein”, or TSPO, in their brain. Because TSPO levels are thought to increase during an inflammatory response, our work suggests that neuroinflammation may contribute to the experience of chronic pain, paving the way for novel ways of treating this complex condition.
This paper was foundational for our laboratory, and since its publication we have been able to document the presence of neuroinflammation in many other conditions characterized by chronic pain, including fibromyalgia, Gulf War Illness, knee osteoarthritis and migraine. While we still do not understand the implications of these observations, the mere fact that we are observing a similar phenomenon in some many different conditions leads us to believe that neuroinflammation may be an crucial player in our quest to understand, and then defeat, chronic pain.
How does your research apply to everyday people's lives?
The work from our laboratory may help everyday people’s lives in multiple ways.
First, it may lead to the development of novel ways of treating (or preventing) chronic pain. Second, identifying objective brain “signatures” of pain may allow us to quantify the efficacy of various treatments more accurately (compared to the simple “0-10 pain scale”, which is typically used in clinical trials), eventually contributing to the development and testing of new, more effective interventions. Finally, and equally important, by showing the presence of biological changes in the brains of our patients, our work can provide an objective “validation” that what our patients are reporting is real.
This is particularly crucial for certain individuals that are often mistrusted, not taken seriously, stigmatized and -as a consequence- often under-treated or mis-treated (e.g., patients with fibromyalgia, veterans with Gulf War Illness, minoritized individuals).
We are hoping to give a new meaning to the sentence, typically used as an expression of dismissal, “your pain is all in your head”.
What is something you wish everyone knew about the research you perform?
While our research tends to be “brain-centric”, we are slowly making our way throughout the rest of the body, to understand the impact of pain on the entire organism.
We are running multiple clinical trials testing the effect of various treatments (e.g. medications, surgery, complementary and integrative therapies, neuromodulation) in patients with various chronic pain disorders, including chronic low back pain, migraine, knee osteoarthritis, Gulf War Illness, carpal tunnel syndrome, and more.
We are also trying to see whether brain inflammation can be imaged using more widely available and less invasive or expensive methods than PET. If successful, this would enable many more investigators around the world to perform work similar to ours, even if they don’t work in institutions with access to this unique equipment.
About the Mass General Research Institute
Massachusetts General Hospital is home to the largest hospital-based research program in the United States. Our researchers work side-by-side with physicians to develop innovative new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease.
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I would like to know if Patients with Lyme disease ( and other tickborne illness) are included in your research? Thank you