Ru-Rong Ji

Ru-Rong has been doing pain and neuroscience research for 25 years. His current research focuses on chronic pain mechanisms and the development of novel pain therapeutics. His group studies how neuroinflammation, glial cells, and ion channels regulate sensory neuron excitability and spinal cord synaptic transmission in chronic pain. He has extensive expertise in animal models of inflammatory pain and neuropathic pain and also in studying synaptic plasticity and neuron-glial interactions. He is internationally recognized for demonstrating the important roles of MAP kinase signaling pathways and glial cells in the pathogenesis of chronic pain. His group has shown unique mechanisms of chemokines, cytokines, miRNAs, resolvins, Nav1.7, neuronal TLRs, and stem cells in pain regulation. Ru-Rong has published 160 peer-reviewed papers, including many papers in top medical and neuroscience journals. He also serves on editorial boards of Pain, Anesthesiology, Neuroscience, and Neuroscience Bulletin.

His major research interests include (a) Pathogenesis of pain via neural-glial interactions: (b)Resolution of pain by anti-inflammatory and pro-resolution mediators: (c) Molecular mechanisms of itch.

Dr. Ji received his Ph.D. degree at Shanghai Institute of Physiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He had postdoctoral research training with renowned scientists including Ji-Sheng Han (Peking University, Beijing), Tomas Hokfelt (Karolinska Institute, Stockholm), and Clifford Woolf (Harvard Medical School, Boston). Before joining Duke Faculty in 2012, he had been a faculty member at Harvard Medical School for 13 years as Instructor/Assistant Professor at Massachusetts General Hospital (1999-2003) and Assistant Professor/Associate Professor (2003-2012) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.