Quiver Bioscience Receives NIH HEAL Initiative Award to Advance Nav1.7 Antisense Therapy for Chronic Pain Through Early Clinical Trials

Multi-year grant supports advancement of QV-2421 through IND-enabling studies and first-in-human trials, powered by the Quiver Discovery Platform

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Quiver Bioscience (“Quiver”), a discovery platform, technology and therapeutics company advancing programs for the treatment of serious central nervous system (CNS) disorders and chronic pain, today announced receipt of a multi-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance its lead Nav1.7-targeted antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) QV-2421 through first-in-human clinical trials for chronic neuropathic pain pending achievement of program milestones. The award provides up to $9.3 million in direct funding and access to NIH-supported development resources, including CMC and IND-enabling studies, to support key preclinical activities and an initial clinical trial, representing total potential development support of approximately $20 million.

The phased UG3/UH3 grant (UG3NS146009), awarded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is titled “Development of Nav channel targeting antisense oligonucleotides as chronic pain therapeutics using an integrated platform based on machine learning and optical electrophysiology.” This cooperative agreement is issued through NIH’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative, a congressionally funded NIH-wide research effort launched in 2018 to combat the opioid crisis and improve pain management. It funds research across prevention, treatment, and harm reduction to develop evidence-based, non-addictive solutions for both opioid use disorder and chronic pain.

Chronic neuropathic pain affects 7–10% of the global population and remains one of the most difficult conditions to treat effectively. Patients suffering from neuropathic pain conditions frequently experience debilitating burning, shooting, and stabbing pain that profoundly impacts sleep, mental health, and quality of life. Current first-line therapies are effective in fewer than half of patients, and opioid-based treatments, while commonly used, carry well-documented risks of dependence and adverse effects.

Despite decades of research, no therapy has successfully targeted the biology underlying neuropathic pain. QV-2421, Quiver's lead ASO candidate, targets Nav1.7, a voltage-gated sodium channel genetically validated as a key mediator of pain transmission. Humans born without functional Nav1.7 are completely insensitive to pain, while gain-of-function mutations in the same channel are directly linked to erythromelalgia and small fiber neuropathy. Despite this compelling biology, previous attempts to block Nav1.7 with small molecule drugs have fallen short due to selectivity, target engagement, and tolerability challenges. Quiver's ASO-based approach, informed by novel insights from the Quiver Discovery Platform, is designed to overcome these limitations. Through targeted reduction of Nav1.7 expression in sensory neurons, QV-2421 aims to deliver sustained, targeted pain relief without the addiction risks associated with opioid therapies.

Quiver will deploy its proprietary CNS drug Discovery Platform, which combines all-optical electrophysiology, patient-derived iPSC sensory neuron models, and machine learning-guided ASO design, to optimize QV-2421 and advance it toward clinical development. The program also leverages an established collaboration with Dr. Charles Berde, MD, PhD, Sara Page Mayo Chair in Pediatric Pain Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Co-Principal Investigator of the award, to conduct a Phase Ib trial in patients affected by erythromelalgia, an inherited chronic pain disorder.

“Chronic pain patients are profoundly underserved, and the limitations of small molecules have left one of the field's most validated and compelling targets largely untapped. We believe our precision oligo-based approach to Nav1.7 can change that, offering a path to effective pain treatment for broad patient populations,” said Graham Dempsey, co-Founder and CEO of Quiver Bioscience.

“Support from the NIH HEAL Initiative provides an important opportunity to advance a non-opioid therapeutic strategy for chronic pain. By combining machine learning–guided ASO design with human iPSC-derived sensory neuron models and all-optical electrophysiology, we aim to precisely modulate Nav1.7 and translate strong human genetics into a viable therapy. We are excited to work with NIH to advance QV-2421 toward the clinic and ultimately bring new options to patients suffering from debilitating neuropathic pain,” said Hongkang Zhang, VP, Head of Pain Therapeutics Research at Quiver Bioscience and Principal Investigator of the award.

Research reported in this press release is supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health and the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative under award number 1UG3NS146009. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About Quiver Bioscience

Quiver Bioscience is building the world's leading human functional intelligence platform for CNS drug discovery and advancing an internal pipeline of precision therapeutics for neurological and pain disorders. The company's proprietary platform is anchored by the largest functional neuronal dataset comprised of over 1.5 billion action potentials across over 30 million individual neurons, 18,000 gene perturbations, and 3,500 drug fingerprints enabling precise target identification, functional validation, and safety assessment at unmatched scale. Quiver's integrated wetware, hardware, and AI software architecture operates as a self-reinforcing lab-in-the-loop, where every experiment improves the underlying models and every partnership deepens the platform's competitive advantage. The platform has been validated across several CNS programs and partnerships and has yielded multiple therapeutic candidates now advancing through IND-enabling development. For more information, visit www.quiverbioscience.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those anticipated.