Vertex Pharmaceuticals said Thursday that its closely watched drug, suzetrigine, reduced pain compared to baseline but did not outperform a placebo in a Phase 2 study, raising doubts about the medicine’s potential in the lucrative market for treating chronic pain.
The company said in a press release that it believes addressing variability among responses in placebo patients by better designing its clinical trials could allow suzetrigine to succeed in a future Phase 3 study.
Researchers gave suzetrigine to 102 patients with lumbosacral radiculopathy (LSR), a condition in which compressed nerves in the spine lead to back and leg pain. The main goal of the study was reducing those patients’ pain as measured by the numeric pain rating scale, which asks patients to rank pain from 0 (no pain) to 10 (the worst pain imaginable).
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