Montara Therapeutics, Inc., a San Francisco, CA-based therapeutics company aiming to advance brain-targeting drugs, closed an $8m seed financing.
The round was led by SV Health Investors’ Dementia Discovery Fund and co-lead Two Bear Capital. Dolby Family Ventures and KdT Ventures also participated in the round. In connection with this financing, Dirk Landgraf, Ph.D., Principal at SV, and J. Seth Strattan, Ph.D., General Partner at Two Bear Capital, have joined Montara’s Board of Directors.
The company intends to use the funds to advance its universal peripheral blocker and a neurological disease-targeting drug with proven clinical benefit but severe dose-limiting peripheral side effects. Montara has also initiated chemistry on subsequent programs for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Led by Nicholas T. Hertz, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Montara Therapeutics is a preclinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pursuing novel approaches to develop safer and more efficacious treatments for neurological diseases. Its BrainOnly platform allows brain-specific pharmacology utilizing existing and novel chemical warheads, restricting deleterious on-target off-tissue peripheral activity.
The platform is based on research from the Shokat Lab at The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and was published in Nature in 2022 (link to paper). The technology is exclusively licensed from UCSF through its Office of Technology Management and Advancement.
Montara was founded in 2023 by Nicholas T. Hertz, Ph.D., and scientific co-founders: UCSF Professor Kevan Shokat, Ph.D., who invented the covalent inhibition approach to target KRAS G12C, a previously undruggable target, and co-founded many successful biotechnology companies; Stanford University Professor Thomas Südhof, M.D., who won the Nobel Prize for his research in vesicle trafficking; and UCSF Professor Martin Kampmann, Ph.D., who has conducted extensive research in aging-associated neurodegenerative diseases. All of the scientific co-founders will serve on Montara’s Scientific Advisory Board. Since the company’s founding, the Dementia Discovery Fund has closely collaborated with Dr. Hertz on the business plan and the corporate and pipeline strategy.
Prior to founding Montara, Drs. Hertz and Shokat collaborated to found Mitokinin, which advanced a potential first-in-class disease-modifying treatment for Parkinson’s disease. In October 2023, Mitokinin was acquired by AbbVie for $110 million upfront and up to $655 million in total deal value, in addition to tiered royalties.
FinSMEs
30/07/2024