Pamela P. Palmer

Pamela P. Palmer, M.D., Ph.D., has been Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of AcelRx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. since she co-founded the company in July 2005. Earlier, she was an anesthesiologist at University California San Francisco — UCSF. She was director of the UCSF Pain Center for Advanced Research and Education — PainCARE — between 2005 and 2009. The American Pain Society named the UCSF Pain Management Center and PainCARE jointly as one of only six centers of excellence nationwide. Between 1999 and 2005, she was Medical Director of the UCSF Pain Management Center, which uses a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to treat patients with various stages and types of complex acute and chronic pain. From 1996 to 1999, Dr. Palmer worked as a faculty member at UCSF, where she conducted research on basic science mechanisms of pain transmission in her NIH-funded laboratory. In 1994, she co-founded Omeros Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company developing small-molecule and protein therapeutics aimed at improving pain management and clinical outcomes of patients undergoing a wide range of surgical and medical procedures. Dr. Palmer received a medical degree and a doctorate in neuroscience at Stanford University and completed her anesthesia residency at the University of California, San Francisco.