Vice Chair of Research Matt Mauck, MD, PhD, received his undergraduate degree at Xavier University and his MD, PhD degrees from the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He completed his residency in Anesthesiology, followed by a Pain Medicine Fellowship at Duke University prior to joining the faculty at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Mauck, trained as a basic scientist in vision neuroscience, has multiple scientific lines of research focused on improving chronic pain. Dr. Mauck is also a clinician, and sees patients at the UNC Pain Management Center where he provides comprehensive pain management to patients living in chronic pain.
The Mauck Lab focuses on four main areas of chronic pain research:
1) Chronic pain development following burn injury. Chronic pain is common following burn injury and previous studies in the lab have shown an association between low peritraumatic Vitamin D levels and chronic pain severity following burn injury. Therefore, we hypothesize that supplementation of Vitamin D in the peritraumatic period may improve chronic pain outcomes via inflammatory mechanisms. To test this hypothesis, Dr. Mauck and his team are currently enrolling participants in a mechanistic, randomized controlled clinical trial aimed to assess the influence of Vitamin D on immune mechanisms following burn injury.
2) Inflammatory mechanisms of chronic pain. Immune dysfunction is strongly associated with chronic pain. Dr. Mauck’s lab is currently developing state-of-the-art methods using mass cytometry to assesses immune mechanisms involved in chronic pain from participants enrolled in clinical studies.
3) Development of precision medicine algorithms for management of chronic low back pain. Dr. Mauck is the contact Principal Investigator of the Biomarkers for Evaluating Spine Treatments trial, an NIH-funded precision medicine study aimed to develop a precision medicine algorithm that will use biomarkers to inform the optimal sequence of treatments to address chronic low back pain. This study, funded by the NIH HEAL Initiative, is the collaborative centerpiece of the Back Pain Consortium. An additional goal of this work is to develop an improved understanding of biomarkers that underlie chronic low back pain and the response to interventions.
4) Development of novel light treatments presented to the retina for acute and chronic pain. Dr. Mauck is collaborating with investigators from across the country to pull together his expertise in vision neuroscience and chronic pain. The aim of this work is to identify neural mechanisms that underlie the phenomenon of light-driven analgesia and to develop novel approaches to treating chronic pain using light delivered to the retina.
Lab Members