March 2022
Dr. Simon Haroutounian is the Chief of Clinical and Translational Research, Chief of Clinical Pain Research, and an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology for the Washington University Pain Center. Dr. Haroutounian obtained his BSc. Pharm and MSc. Pharm degrees, as well as his Ph.D., from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has completed a Fulbright doctoral fellowship in pain outcomes research at the University of Utah, and a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical pain research at the Danish Pain Research Center in Aarhus, Denmark.
He has been involved in numerous studies and initiatives for understanding the mechanisms of cannabinoid-mediated analgesia and synthesizing the evidence of the efficacy and safety of cannabis and cannabinoid-based medicine for the treatment of pain.
Dr. Haroutounian also serves on the International Association for the Study of Pain’s task force on cannabis and cannabinoid analgesia to systematically examine the evidence on analgesic pharmacology of cannabinoids and preclinical evidence on their efficacy in animal models of injury-related or pathological persistent pain; the clinical efficacy of cannabis, cannabinoids, and cannabis-based medicines for pain; harms related to long-term use of cannabinoids; as well as societal issues and policy implications related to the use of these compounds for pain management.