There is a lack of diversity within the current pain market, with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and opioids dominating the market. With 98% of currently marketed drugs for pain being generics, the pain market provides significant opportunities for innovation and development, according to GlobalData, a leading intelligence and productivity platform.

GlobalData’s latest report, Global Pain Therapeutics Market and Modality Trends, reveals that one of the most significant research and development (R&D) trends in pain treatment is the emergence of voltage-gated sodium channel inhibitors as a validated therapeutic modality for pain relief, providing an alternative to opioids.

Philippa Salter, Neurology Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Although opioids provide highly effective acute analgesia, they are associated with substantial risks of addiction, respiratory depression, and fatal overdose. Further, as patients develop tolerance to opioids, dose escalation is required to maintain therapeutic effect, resulting in their limited effectiveness for managing chronic pain. Therefore, the most important unmet need in the pain market, consistently highlighted by key opinion leaders (KOLs) interviewed by GlobalData, is the need for non-addictive alternatives to opioids.”

The recent approval of Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ Journavx (suzetrigine), a NaV1.8 voltage-gated sodium channel inhibitor, for moderate-to-severe acute pain in adults has provided a key breakthrough as the first new class of pain medicine to be approved in more than 20 years.

Salter adds “KOLs agreed that while Journavx is a welcome non-addictive pain management option, it is not as effective at providing pain relief as they would like to see, especially when compared to opioids. Therefore, as pain is such a heterogenous indication, significant opportunities remain for a variety of different and more effective non-opioid treatment options to be developed.”

As well as novel targets, developers are also looking to novel modalities beyond oral small molecules, such as cell and gene therapies, to provide more targeted and long-lasting pain management.

Salter continues “According to GlobalData’s drugs database, as of January 2026, 39% of the global pain pipeline consists of molecule types other than small molecules. Outside of pharmacological developments, other trends in the pain market include the development of neuromodulation techniques, as well as the use of digital therapeutics and wearable devices to improve pain management.”

While opportunities exist, there are multiple challenges surrounding drug development in the pain market. Firstly, pain is inherently subjective, making it challenging to objectively determine a drug’s efficacy in a clinical trial. Pain trials are also associated with high placebo response rates, further increasing the challenge of demonstrating efficacy. Additionally, chronic pain is highly heterogenous with many patients experiencing a mixture of different pain types, making patient stratification for clinical trials a challenge.

Salter concludes “However, regulatory incentives to develop non-opioid pain candidates, and innovation in trial designs, such as master protocol platform trials that allow multiple novel compounds to be evaluated across multiple pain types simultaneously, reducing development times and costs, mean significant interest remains in the pain market.”

GlobalData operates an intelligence platform that empowers leaders to act decisively in a world of complexity and change. By uniting proprietary data, human expertise, and purpose-built AI into a single, connected platform, we help organizations see what’s coming, move faster, and lead with confidence. Our solutions are used by over 5,000 organizations across the world’s largest industries, delivering tailored intelligence that supports strategic planning, innovation, risk management, and sustainable growth.

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