Pharmaceutical companies have been racing to develop effective pain treatment alternatives that don’t have the addictive properties of opioids.
Now investors can put their money on a Thousand Oaks company in this race.
Thousand Oaks-based Latigo Biotherapeutics Inc. netted $346 million from its Aug. 7 initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The offering was priced at $18 a share; over the next five trading sessions, the price edged up to about $20.
The company’s lead drug candidate, given the temporary name LTG-001, blocks a sodium channel in pain-sensing neurons that transmits pain signals. Its initial target is acute pain treatment.
In March of last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted “fast-track”’ designation to the drug, a process designed to speed up the creation and review of new medicines.
“Receiving Fast Track designation for LTG-001 underscores the serious unmet medical need in patients suffering from acute pain conditions,” Neil Singla, Latigo’s chief medical officer, said in a statement.
Last month, Latigo announced positive Phase 2 clinical trial results for the drug, which has the temporary name LTG-001. The company is currently preparing to take the drug into Phase 3, the largest and most complex clinical trial phase.
In January 2025, the FDA approved a similar drug called Suzetrigine developed by Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.
A handful of other pharma companies are in various stages of development of their versions of drugs that block sodium pain signal transmission channels in pain-sensing neurons.
Launched out of VC firm
Latigo Biotherapeutics was launched in 2018 as WVB-Desmond Inc. The WVB stood for Westlake Village BioPartners, a life sciences-focused venture capital firm that has been crucial to launching bioscience companies along the 101 Corridor between Woodland Hills and Camarillo. The aim was to commercialize a class of pain inhibitors that does not have the addictive properties of opioid drugs.
In 2019, the fledgling company changed its name to Latigo Biotherapeutics.
In February 2024, Latigo Biotherapeutics emerged from stealth with a $135 million series A funding round. Later that year, Latigo’s board chose industry veteran Nima Farzan as its chief executive.
Farzan had just come off a successful run at San Diego-based Kinnate Biopharma, helping take that company public through an IPO that netted $270 million and then engineering its sale to Emeryville-based Xoma Corp. in April 2024 for a base cash price of $123 million plus future net proceeds from future program sales.
Goldman Sachs & Co., Jefferies, Leerink Partners and Guggenheim Securities acted as joint book-running managers for Latigo’s IPO earlier this month.
