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Non-opioid pain therapies are entering an unprecedented era, marked by the landmark FDA approval of Vertex’s Journavx and a growing number of alternative approaches. Their ultimate uptake, however, remains to be seen.

AlgoTherapeutix blames a “strong placebo effect” for the mid-stage failure for its pain gel ATX01, but the company still believes in the promise of its candidate as Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ first-in-class drug Journavx opens up the non-opioid space.

Vertex expects to make the newly approved non-opioid pain medicine Journavx available by the end of February.

Along with its gene editing therapy Casgevy, Vertex is offering fertility preservation support for its patients—a program that the HHS claims violates anti-kickback statutes.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ investigational non-opioid analgesic suzetrigine failed to outperform placebo. Investors voiced their concerns as the company’s share price fell 13% in premarket trading.

The new combination, dubbed Alyftrek, is designed to improve on the Trikafta, a product that generated sales of $8.9 billion in 2023. It’s welcome good news for Vertex following last week’s subpar clinical results for its non-opioid analgesic.

Vertex unveiled long-term durability data for Casgevy, while Beam presented Phase I/II findings for its investigational base editor BEAM-101, building up to a BLA by late 2026.

The greenlight for Journavx (suzetrigine), which comes on the heels of a $7.4 billion opioid settlement, could spark momentum in the fledgling non-opioid pain space.

If the attention generated by BioSpace’s coverage of this landmark approval is any indication, Americans are hungry for non-opioid pain treatments that could help quell the still raging opioid epidemic.

William Blair analyst Myles Minter in a Monday note to investors said that Vertex’s povetacicept “has maintained its potential to be a best-in-class asset” in the IgA nephropathy space and could become a “multibillion-dollar pipeline-in-a-drug product” for autoimmune disorders, while “outstanding questions” remain for Biogen’s felzartamab before moving into pivotal studies.