UF scientists are asking the question: Why do people experience pain differently? The answer may be found in a surprising place: valuable human tissue that would otherwise be thrown away after surgery.

With $10 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, researchers from UF’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and the College of Dentistry are storing post-surgical human tissue in a repository, collecting data points from the samples, and mapping and analyzing the tissue via artificial intelligence tools. The goal is to explore pain pathways and create custom pain treatments.

“Pain is often viewed as something simple – a lot of pain, a little pain,” said Kyle Allen, Ph.D., a professor in UF’s J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering. “How do I know you experience pain the way I experience pain? We don’t experience it the same way, and we know this through a lot of research.”