Pharma advances non-opioid pain drugs By HPN Staff The American pharmaceutical industry has been making significant progress in developing medications that can treat severe pain as effectively as opioids without the risk of addiction. Earlier this year, drug maker Vertex received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market the non-opioid painkiller suzetrigine, under the brand name Journavx, for the treatment of acute pain. This is the first time in 25 years that the FDA has approved a new type of painkilling medication, and the first of potentially many non-opioid pain treatments to become available to patients. Why It Matters According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as of 2021, it was estimated that 51.6 million U.S. adults — about 20% of the population — experienced chronic pain regularly. However, while opioids have proven effective at treating that pain, they are addictive. A combination of factors — including early over-prescription and the manufacture and trafficking of illicit opioids on the black market — created an addiction epidemic. While drug overdose deaths decreased by nearly 30% in 2024, opioids still account for a majority of the 80,000 Americans who die from overdose annually. New drugs, such as suzetrigine, offer pain patients an alternative to habit-forming opioids, and less-effective over-the-counter medications such as acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS). The Bigger Picture While opioids work by slowing the transmission of pain signals in the central nervous system and the brain, in doing so, they also alter brain chemistry in such a way as to create dependency. Suzetrigine, by contrast, works by blocking sodium ion channels in peripheral nerve cells that are used to transmit pain signals. As such, they are far removed from the brain and CNS, minimizing the chance of affecting those systems the way opioids can. Researchers have been working on pathways to block sodium ion channels for years, but suzetrigine is the first drug to show highly promising results. Suzetrigine has some limits — it has not been tested in pregnant women and should not be used in patients with severe liver or kidney disease. In addition, it has only been approved for acute, not chronic, pain; however, Vertex researchers have reported positive results of clinical trials in patients with chronic pain. While Journavx (suzetrigine) is the first non-opioid pain medication to receive FDA approval, others are in the wings, including SBI-810, an experimental drug developed at Duke University School of Medicine that targets pain receptors in the nerves and spinal cord, and technologies being developed by Navega Therapeutics that use molecular editing. Additional context Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told lawmakers at an Energy and Commerce Health subcommittee hearing that he supports the legislation that would remove barriers to access to non-opioid pain management drugs in the Medicare Part D program. He referred to Journavx as an example of these drugs.
