Latigo: aiming for best-in-class non-opioid analgesia via Nav1.8

With a team heavy on ex-Amgen talent and a $135 million series A round co-led by Westlake Village Biopartners, 5AM Ventures and Foresite Capital, Latigo is taking a crack at solving the pressing need for non-opioid analgesics, starting with LTG-001, a Nav1.8-targeting small molecule due to enter Phase II testing this year.

Westlake’s Sean Harper, who himself hails from Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN), told BioCentury that the firm founded Latigo Biotherapeutics Inc. as a de novo drug discovery and development company because it had wanted to back a company developing non-opioid analgesics but couldn’t find any intellectual property worth licensing at the time. Despite the need for new pain medications that lack the abuse potential and side effects of opioids, research has been limited, partly due to the perceived regulatory and commercial challenges. ...