Meet UMB’s Researcher of the Year

About Luana Colloca, MD, PhD, MS

Colloca, professor, Department of Pain and Translational Symptom Science, and director, Placebo Beyond Opinions Center, University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON), and University of Maryland MPower professor, has conducted groundbreaking studies on the placebo phenomenon that have advanced scientific understanding of the brain’s ability to regulate the pain experience and led to the development of novel strategies to optimize therapeutic outcomes in clinical practice. Colloca is an international expert in the fields of placebo effect and nocebo effect — the opposite of the placebo effect in which instead of having a positive response, patients have negative outcomes to treatments that cannot be explained by the treatments’ pharmacologic effects — and mechanisms of pain modulation. She has secured multiple National Institutes of Health awards, including several R01 grants and an R21 grant. Colloca’s body of research has been published in more than 200 papers in high-impact medical journals and cited more than 19,000 times. She holds secondary appointments as professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, serves as the T32 pre- and postdoctoral training program director of the UMB Institute for Clinical and Translational Research’s Clinical and Translational Science Award, and mentors MPower scholars.

Impact

Colloca’s key discoveries have included challenging the traditional framework of expectations versus conditioning as the primary explanation for the psychobiological mechanisms of the placebo effect, introducing observational, or social, learning as a trigger mechanism. Her work also has led to discovering that a neuropeptide — arginine vasopressin — is involved in pain modulation; understanding how dose-extending placebos can be harnessed to taper medications via pharmacological conditioning; and adding new genetic mechanisms as predictors of placebo effects.

Quotes

“When I mentor, I don’t just pass on knowledge — I help to promote curiosity, critical thinking, and a sense of purpose. It’s incredibly rewarding to watch students grow and develop their own ideas and career paths. Our role as mentors is to help them gain the confidence to pursue their own research paths.” — Colloca

“Dr. Colloca’s research over the past 10 years at UMSON has significantly advanced the field of pain and translational symptom science. Her innovative studies on placebo effects, immersive virtual reality, and pain modulation have influenced clinical practice and public policy, providing new approaches to pain management that reduce reliance on opioid medications.” — Barbara Resnick, PhD, CRNP, FAAN, FAANP, professor, Department of Organizational Systems and Adult Health, Sonya Ziporkin Gershowitz Chair in Gerontology, and associate dean for research, UMSON, and Distinguished University Professor, UMB