King’s College London Prof earns the British Pain Society Patrick D. Wall Award

Kirsty Bannister, Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, was selected as the winner of the 2023 British Pain Society Patrick D. Wall Award. She received the award in person during the BSP Annual Scientific Meeting on 9-11 May 2023 in Glasgow, during which she presented the Patrick D. Wall plenary lecture titled “The top-down control of pain in health and disease: From bedside to bench”. Dr Kirsty Bannister leads the Bannister Group in Wolfson CARD, with a research focus on the biological, pharmacological and anatomical basis of pain pathways and their plasticity in chronic pain states.

Kirsty Bannister Patrick D Wall 2023
In her plenary lecture, she describes her group’s efforts to address the problem of developing novel analgesics. She summarised how they tackled the issue of invalid targets by performing pre-clinical work that investigates pain-processing circuitry in a healthy body(setting the foundation of research into dysfunction in disease). She also discussed the methods currently used to assess pain and the need for improved categorisation of patients by performing clinical work that investigates psychophysical approaches in Parkinson’s and inflammatory disease patients.

‘It was an honour to attend the British Pain Society congress as the 2023 Patrick D. Wall plenarist and awardee. The Society’s dedication to improving clinical practice and healthcare policies fundamental to the pain community is reflected in our lab’s ongoing translational research efforts, and I am delighted that this was recognised.”

‘Professor Wall had an international reputation for pain research, especially the application of laboratory experiments to increase understanding of clinical findings. Combining bench and bedside research, Dr Kirsty Bannister’s work investigating the anatomy and pharmacology of brain and spinal cord sensory circuits in health and disease continues to exemplify Professor Wall’s philosophy. She is a very worthy recipient of the Patrick Wall Medal 2023.’’, said Professor Roger Knaggs, President of the British Pain Society.

The British Pain Society is the oldest and largest multidisciplinary professional organisation in the field of pain within the UK. Treatment of pain is a fundamental human right, yet sadly there is an enormous gap between the care people require and what happens in practice. We also do not know enough about the cause and treatment of pain. The BPS alliance of professionals working collaboratively with patients and industry partners to advance the understanding and management of pain is multidisciplinary in nature, making the British Pain Society a uniquely relevant representative body on all matters relating to pain.