Relief from chronic pain remains a recognized unmet medical need. Consequently, the search for new analgesic agents is being intensively studied by the pharmaceutical industry. The TRPV1 receptor is a ligand gated ion channel  that has been implicated in mediation of many types of pain and therefore studied most extensively. The first competitive antagonist, capsazepine, was first described in 1990; since then, several TRPV1 antagonists have entered clinical trials as analgesic agents. Should these new chemical entities relieve symptoms of chronic pain, then this class of compounds may offer one of the first novel mechanisms for the treatment of pain in many years.