Associates of professor Primorac and Italian partners in the EU project visit Croatia

Professors Dragan Primorac and Gordan Lauc, the heads of the Croatian branch of the FP-7 project “Pain-OMICS”, for which the European Commission granted HRK 17 million to St. Catherine’s Specialty Hospital and Genos (making it the highest financed project in the area of Health in Croatia), met today with Dr. Massimo Allegri and Dr. Roberto Viganò, Italian associates in the project. The total value of the interdisciplinary project titled “Multi-dimensional omics approach to stratification of patients with low back pain” is EUR 7.2 million (about HRK 50 million) and Croatian institutions St. Catherine’s Specialty Hospital and laboratory Genos cooperate in the project side by side with scientists from the Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and the United States. The project will utilise the new “omics” technologies to enable efficient stratification of patients with spinal pain in order to understand the biology of the origination of the pain and to provide a personalized approach to treatment. A notable merit of the project lies in the fact that during the course of the five-year project period the scientists shall seek to identify biochemical and genetic markers responsible for the onset and progression of the condition.

Dr. Massimo Allegri is the head of the SIMPAR, one of the leading European research groups engaged in multidisciplinary research of “pain” and a member of the “Pain Therapy Service Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo” of Pavia, also editor at magazines Fighting Pain and Minerva Anestesiologica. Dr. Roberto Viganò is a leading Italian orthopedist specialized for the area of rheumatology and the head of AO Istituto Ortopedico Gaetano Pini from Milan, a scientific adviser to the famous Italian sportswear brand company Diadora from 1982 to 1997, and is a visiting professor at the Yale Medical School in the United States.