Ceasing pain, elevating life
Our name comes from nirodha, the Pali word for “cessation”. Our name reflects what drives us: to end pain safely and restore life’s fullness through groundbreaking non-opioid pain medicines.
We are a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company advancing a portfolio of complementary non-opioid medicines with best-in-class potential for single-agent and combination pain therapy.
Pain touches every life
All of us have experienced pain. It is one of the most common reasons people seek medical care, yet meaningful innovation in pain treatment has lagged behind the needs of hundreds of millions living with acute and chronic pain. All the while, the opioid epidemic remains an urgent public health crisis.
Dawn of a new era in pain medicine
Breakthroughs in pharmacology have unlocked the first new pain mechanisms in more than twenty years—signaling a long-awaited sea change in how pain can be understood and treated. This shift offers new hope at a time when patients have often been forced to choose between inadequate relief and medications that carry significant risks.
Niroda’s goal is to harness these advances to develop safe, effective, scalable, and non-opioid targeted therapies – both as single agents and rational combinations – to address the full spectrum of pain. Niroda is committed to delivering medicines that reduce reliance on opioids, improve quality of life, and reduce the health and economic burden of pain for as many patients as possible.
About us
Niroda is a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company aiming to develop and deliver safe, effective, and scalable non-opioid pain medicines that improve quality of life and reduce the health, economic, and emotional burden of acute and chronic pain worldwide.
Eshan Vasudeva, MD
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Greg Williams, PhD
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
Doug Krafte, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer
Clive Meanwell, MD
Co-Founder and Senior Advisor
Dean Mariano, DO, FASA
Chief Medical Officer
Jack Krieger, PhD
SVP, Business Development and Strategy
Lori Lavoie
Head of Human Strategy
Mark Young, JD
General Counsel
Dave Clark
VP, Finance
Kerry Hafner
SVP Biometics
Investors
Scientific thesis
Pain signals arise in the body and are transmitted toward the brain by ion channels that are specific to the peripheral nervous system. Niroda’s initial focus is to modulate those ion channels to inhibit pain signals before they reach the brain, with the potential to specifically target pain without affecting other tissues.
Local anesthetics provide compelling demonstration of ion channel biology: agents like lidocaine and bupivacaine can abolish pain transmission when applied locally, but their non-selective blockade of sodium channels makes them unsafe for systemic use.
Niroda seeks to translate this mechanistic clarity into next-generation therapies—highly selective ion channel modulators for single-agent and combination therapies that produce potent analgesia, enabling safe oral and intravenous administration and offering a valuable alternative to opioids.
Approach
Building on growing clinical validation of sodium channels as breakthrough mechanisms, Niroda’s portfolio includes novel sodium channel inhibitors designed with best-in-class properties as single agents. Beyond monotherapy, Niroda is pioneering rational combinations designed to achieve levels of efficacy that may exceed what single agents alone can deliver.
Niroda uses a proprietary translational platform to prioritize pain indications, characterize drug combinations, and accelerate new target selection and drug discovery. The company’s drug discovery engine seeks to create next-generation therapies and combinations that push the frontier of efficacy.
Niroda’s veteran team brings decades of experience in ion channel research, pain drug development, translational medicine, and company building. The company is guided by a world-class Scientific Advisory Board composed of leaders in pain pharmacology and trial design.
Our programs
Niroda’s pipeline seeks to target complementary ion channel mechanisms to deliver faster, more effective, safer, and non-addictive pain relief to patients with acute and chronic pain. Today, Niroda is the only company with active clinical-stage Nav1.8 and Nav1.7 inhibitors, which have potential best-in-class properties for Nav1.8 monotherapy and, uniquely, for Nav1.8 + Nav1.7 combination therapy—an approach that may push the frontier of what Nav1.8 alone can achieve. By developing both oral and injectable formulations, Niroda aims to address the full range of acute and chronic pain across diverse clinical settings.
Asset
Program
Preclinical
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Approved
NR-2507
Nav1.7
NR-2507 +
NR-2501
combination
monotherapy PhASE 1s complete
Combo PhASE 1 start 2026
Next-gen discovery
Next-generation combinations and compounds
DISCOVERY
In the news
Niroda Therapeutics Launches to Lead a New Era of Non-Opioid Pain Medicine
December 17, 2025
Building differentiated pipeline of ion-channel–based therapies to accelerate innovation and address the urgent global need for safer, non-addictive, mechanism-driven pain medicines.
Clinical-stage Nav1.8 and Nav1.7 inhibitor programs hold potential to deliver best-in-class monotherapy
and combination treatments across a broad range of acute and chronic pain indications.
Led by robust team of R&D operators; development strategies designed to enable rapid, capital-efficient paths to approval
Launching with $70 million in Series A financing led by Population Health Partners (PHP), F-Prime Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures, and Alpha Wave Global.