A current resident of JLab San Diego, Navega Therapeutics Inc - aka Navega Tx - is taking a radically different approach to treatment of chronic pain and, by extension, the tackling of the opioid epidemic. The firm has developed a novel gene therapy to treat severe chronic pain that is non-addictive, highly specific, and long lasting. Building on the proven condition that there are humans having a mutation in their genome that causes them to feel not to feel pain at all, the Navega approach has been to tackle imitating condition by developing a novel gene therapy targeting pain in a non-addictive way. Early work undertaken by the firm principals have so far demonstrated that mice receiving the therapy had increased pain tolerance and lower pain levels during their weeks of treatment. Principals of the firm further validated the approach in three preclinical animal models: inflammatory pain, chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain and BzATP-induced pain. Safety studies that have been undertaken have demonstrated the mice subjected to the therapy had manifested no neurological, motor, or olfactory side-effects.
