opioid-alternative
(2)
Pacira BioSciences, Inc.
Pacira BioSciences (Nasdaq: PCRX) is a U.S. biopharmaceutical company built around a single, stubborn idea: surgery and chronic pain should not require a bottle of opioids. Its flagship product, EXPAREL, a long-acting local anesthetic built on the proprietary DepoFoam multivesicular-liposome delivery platform, anchors a portfolio that also includes the ZILRETTA knee-osteoarthritis injection and the iovera handheld cryoanalgesia device. With roughly 790 employees and about $726 million in 2025 revenue, Pacira is pushing beyond established analgesics into gene therapy (PCRX-201) under a '5x30' growth strategy aimed at reinventing how the world treats pain.
Novilla Pharmaceuticals
Novilla Pharmaceuticals is a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech using a proprietary AI drug-delivery platform to redesign how established drugs reach the body. By pairing chemical-thermodynamic machine learning with deep eutectic solvents and ionic liquids, Novilla formulates non-invasive transdermal creams that concentrate a drug at its site of action while minimizing systemic exposure. Its lead candidate, NOV-1776 for gout flares, reported a 212% increase in efficacy over standard of care with under 1% systemic exposure and no GI adverse events in early human trials, positioning the company as a non-addictive alternative in pain care.