Latigo Biotherapeutics: $135 Million Raised To Develop Non-Opioid Pain Medicines

By Amit Chowdhry • Feb 16, 2024

Latigo Biotherapeutics (a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing best-in-class non-opioid pain medicines that target pain at its source) announced its emergence from stealth with a $135 million Series A financing. Westlake Village BioPartners incubated the company. And Westlake led the Series A financing with 5AM Ventures and Foresite Capital as co-leads with participation from Corner Ventures.

The company has also appointed Desmond Padhi, Pharm.D., operating partner at Westlake as interim chief executive officer (CEO) and Nancy Stagliano, Ph.D., CEO of Neuron23, as chair of the board. The proceeds from the funding will support the continued advancement of Latigo’s portfolio of novel pain therapeutics and the growth of the company and its platform.

Latigo’s lead program LTG-001 is an oral, selective Nav 1.8 inhibitor currently in a Phase 1 clinical trial in healthy volunteers and intended to treat acute and chronic pain. And LTG-001 has the potential to be best-in-class with a rapid onset, meaningful efficacy, and superior safety to standard of care with no central nervous system effects. Along with LTG-001, the company has a suite of Nav1.8 inhibitors, enabling Latigo to address the broad potential of such a target in the clinic. Beyond Nav1.8, the company has a pipeline of novel and genetically identified targets with small molecule programs at the discovery stage.

KEY QUOTES:

“It is particularly gratifying for me to participate in the evolution of Latigo over the past several years since its inception. With a strong syndicate of investors and the significant capital we’ve raised, we are well positioned to build a company that provides new therapeutic options to patients with pain. Latigo’s targets are identified by human genetics, grounded in human biology, and characterized using state-of-the-art human model systems. This combination increases our probability of success across the development continuum.”

  • Dr. Padhi

“Until recently, there was little innovation in pain therapeutics. Current treatments have significant liabilities – opioids carry the risk of dependency, while NSAIDs can be poorly tolerated with long term use. Today, with a potentially best-in-class clinical-stage Nav1.8 inhibitor as our lead program, Latigo is fulfilling its vision of developing non-opioid therapies for patients suffering from acute and chronic pain where there is a significant high unmet need for new treatments.”

  • Dr. Stagliano