Inna Belfer MD, PhD

I am a human geneticist with a primary interest in the relationship between genotypes and complex traits such as human pain, psychiatric diseases, and addictions. My research focuses on optimizing pain assessment, acute and chronic pain phenotyping, selection of pain candidate genes, and genotyping SNP markers. A particular focus is on the effect of genotype on the neurobiology of primary afferent neurons in human dorsal root ganglia. My long-term goals is to identify genetic and non-genetic determinants of human chronic pain conditions such chronic pancreatitis-related pain, including novel genetic determinants of chronic GI pain and their interaction with environmental risk factors.