Current perspectives: non-rodent models of pain: Pain in Animals Workshop 2025

Annually, millions of humans and animals suffer from chronic and acute pain, creating welfare and quality of life concerns for both humans and animals. There is a need to develop new and effective analgesic options as alternatives to opioids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) for humans and animals. A major challenge in developing novel therapeutic approaches is accurately measuring the impact of pain in animal models in a way that is clinically relevant and predictive of clinical efficacy. The Pain in Animals Workshop (PAW) meetings are held every other year in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), bringing key stakeholders together to improve our understanding of the impact of pain in humans and animals and determine how best to measure this impact. The 2025 workshop explored the following topics: - Current perspectives on non-rodent models, - Artificial intelligence applied to the measurement of pain, - Evolutionary clues to pain mechanisms and novel measures, - Breed and sex differences in pain sensitivity (perceptions and reality). The workshop brought together academic, government, and industry experts. Under the topic of ‘Current perspectives on non-rodent models’, current views regarding such models were discussed, whilst also showcasing and discussing recent NIH funded/ongoing programs involving these models. With the current interest in non-rodent models and spontaneous disease models, the discussion on successes and challenges was timely. Given the topic's importance and the meeting's uniqueness, this narrative summarizes the presentations and discussions on the topic of current perspectives on spontaneous and other non-rodent disease models.