Vertex collaborator registers exploratory trial of Journavx for ankle replacement pain

This week's single item concerns a newly registered study of Vertex's non-opioid pain drug suzetrigine, marketed as Journavx, in ankle surgery patients.

• The trial, titled "Project Suzetrigine: The Efficacy and Safety of Suzetrigine (Journavx™) Following Total Ankle Arthroplasty: an Exploratory Prospective Cohort Study,"¹ is listed as not yet recruiting with an estimated start date of 2026-10-01. The study is sponsored by Soheil Ashkani Esfahani, with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated¹ listed as a collaborator. It is a phase 4, single-arm, open-label cohort study with an estimated enrollment of 28 participants, comparing patients undergoing primary total ankle arthroplasty who receive suzetrigine in addition to standard multimodal analgesia against a historical control group of patients from the same institution over the preceding five years who received standard multimodal analgesia alone.¹ The primary outcome is cumulative postoperative opioid consumption through postoperative day 14, calculated in morphine milligram equivalents.¹