Clifford Woolf, MB, BCh, PhD

Title: Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School.

The Aim

The Woolf Lab investigates how nerve cell plasticity enables adaptation or leads to chronic pain and nerve damage, aiming to discover new therapies for neurological diseases.

The Impact

The Woolf Lab studies how pain perception occurs by examining how the nervous system adapts to injury or situations of chronic pain. By exploring how sensory and motor neurons respond to injury, inflammation, and disease, the lab seeks to discover new ways to treat pain, promote nerve repair, and protect brain and nerve function. Their work paves the way for innovative therapies for neurological diseases by identifying the genes and signals that control how neurons grow and survive.

A Closer Look

Article: Pain Points , Harvard Medical School, July 2017. This article profiles Clifford Woolf’s quest to understand pain as both protection and disease, highlighting his optogenetics research showing that tiny pain signals can trigger rapid, complex whole‑body responses.

Article: Startup launches to tackle cough, itch, pain , Harvard Office of Technology Development, April 2019. The piece describes how Nocion Therapeutics, co‑founded by Clifford Woolf and Bruce Bean, is developing targeted, non‑opioid drugs that selectively silence overactive neurons driving cough, itch, and pain.

Contact

Email: clifford.woolf@childrens.harvard.edu
Lab website: kirbyneuro.org/WoolfLab/