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.
Our Team
Niroda’s veteran team brings decades of experience in ion channel research, pain drug development, translational medicine, and company building, all rallying behind a shared vision to improve pain treatment 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
Approach
When pain signals arise in the body, ion channels in the peripheral nervous system transmit them to the brain. By modulating those ion channels to block pain signals before they reach the brain, Niroda intends to target pain directly without affecting healthy tissues. Local anesthetics like lidocaine and bupivacaine have already proven that blocking ion channels in the periphery can relieve pain, but their lack of precision limits safe, systemic use, underscoring the need for a new generation of targeted, safer pain treatments.
Niroda is uniquely positioned to develop highly selective ion channel modulators that alleviate pain, enable safe oral and injectable administration, and offer a valuable alternative to opioids.
Right Thesis
Rooted in proven ion channel biology
Right Portfolio
Clinical-stage Nav1.7 and Nav1.8 inhibitors with best-in-class properties
Right Capabilities
Expertise in ion channel research, pain drug development, translational medicine and company building
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-2501
Nav1.8
Nav1.8
NR-2501 is a highly potent and selective inhibitor of Nav1.8. While early Nav1.8 inhibitors have validated the target, the full therapeutic potential of this mechanism has yet to be realized. NR-2501 has best-in-class properties for Nav1.8 monotherapy in acute and chronic pain, and is the ideal backbone for combination therapy.
In Phase 1 SAD/MAD participants, NR-2501 demonstrated clean safety at high exposures, PK that predicts best-in-class speed and extent of Nav1.8 inhibition, and potentially best-in-class speed (≤ 1 hour) and extent of effect on cold pain tolerance, a predictive PD marker for the Nav1.8 class. NR-2501 is being developed in both oral and injectable formulations to serve broad use cases.
Niroda plans to initiate a Phase 2 study in acute pain in 2026.
NR-2507
Nav1.7
Nav1.7
Nav1.7 is a voltage-gated sodium channel that plays a complementary role to Nav1.8 in pain signaling. Robust human genetics evidence supports targeting Nav1.7 for pain, since genetic loss- and gain-of-function of Nav1.7 causes congenital insensitivity to pain and a cluster of extreme pain disorders, respectively. Like Nav1.8, inhibiting Nav1.7 can effectively modulate action potential firing in peripheral pain neurons with low theoretical risk of addiction.
Our thesis is that NR-2501 combined with low levels of Nav1.7 inhibition by NR-2507 can potentially achieve greater pain relief in a wider variety of pain than Nav1.8 inhibition alone, while maintaining safety.
NR-2507 has potential best-in-class properties, including a wide clinical safety window, favorable peripheral nerve distribution in healthy volunteers and preclinical models, higher free fraction than other clinical Nav1.7 inhibitors, and additive efficacy with NR-2501 in primary human pain neurons ex vivo.
A Phase 1 study of the NR-2507 + NR-2501 combination will initiate in 2026.
Next-gen discovery
Our work doesn’t stop with our current clinical programs. Niroda is researching ways to optimize ion channel modulation and combination approaches—seeking to push beyond what Nav1.8 and Nav1.7 inhibition might achieve. Our integrated discovery and translational capabilities enable us to rapidly evaluate new targets, validate combinations, discover next-generation compounds, and advance the most promising candidates through the clinic.
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.