SiteOne Therapeutics, a San Francisco startup in the pain meds and pain diagnostics arena, has raised $1.5 million in an initial equity round. On top of that, it just secured a $1.4 million Phase II SBIR grant from the NIH.
This early funding round was led by Sears Capital Management and Biobrit LLC.
SiteOne’s technology, which it licenses from Stanford University, is developing a sodium inhibitor to treat moderate to severe pain – with an ultimate goal of creating an option to replace opioid analgesics, the company said. The compound was originally found in the ocean; it’s also got potential use in developing a long-acting local analgesic and a diagnostic PET imaging agent, the company said in a statement.
What Are Healthcare Organizations Getting Wrong about Email Security?
A new report by Paubox calls for healthcare IT leaders to dispose of outdated assumptions about email security and address the challenges of evolving cybersecurity threats.
The sodium ion channel that SiteOne’s targeting – Nav1.7 – “is validated as a target for pain treatment by human genetic conditions,” the company said, which is why it’s attracting a lot of interest as a therapeutic target. Indeed, Cambridge-based Convergence Pharmaceuticals is working on that target as well, and just demonstrated proof-of-concept for a neuropathic pain treatment.