Raphael Thys
Seed round led by SV Health and Two Bear Capital will fund approach aiming to tackle dose-limiting side effects in neurological treatments.
Montara Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing safer and more effective neuroscience drugs, has announced it has closed its $8 million seed round. The financing, which was led by SV Health Investors’ Dementia Discovery Fund and co-led by Two Bear Capital, also saw participation from Dolby Family Ventures and KdT Ventures. The funds will support the advancement of Montara’s BrainOnly platform, a technology designed to mitigate peripheral side effects by concentrating drug activity exclusively within the brain.
Neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and various brain cancers represent some of the most pressing unmet medical needs worldwide. The global burden of these conditions continues to escalate, exacerbated by a lack of effective and well-tolerated treatments. A significant challenge in this domain lies in developing therapies that can cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and effectively target disease sites without causing dose-limiting peripheral side effects – an issue that has rendered many potential treatments undruggable.
Montara’s BrainOnly platform addresses this issue by employing a two-component system: a brain-penetrant, target-specific drug paired with a peripheral blocker that prevents the drug’s activity outside the brain. This innovative approach is informed by pioneering research from the Shokat Lab at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), which has been published in Nature. Montara’s technology, exclusively licensed from UCSF, aims to provide a versatile solution applicable to both existing and novel small molecule inhibitors and activators.
Dr Nicholas T Hertz, Founder and CEO of Montara, remarked on the potential impact of their work: “The unmet needs of patients with neurodegenerative and neurologic diseases and brain cancers are staggering. It’s well understood that uncontrolled peripheral side effects or toxicities associated with brain-targeting drugs are often the barrier to promising treatments. We hope to eliminate this obstacle with our BrainOnly platform, unlocking many previously undruggable neurological targets and delivering a new generation of neuroscience drugs that bring hope to patients and their families.”
The seed funding will enable Montara to progress its initial internal pipeline, which includes a neurological disease-targeting drug with known clinical benefits but severe peripheral side effects. In addition to supporting the development of this therapeutic, the funds will facilitate chemistry efforts on further programs aimed at treating Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The investment also sees the addition of Dirk Landgraf, PhD, Principal at SV and J Seth Strattan, PhD, General Partner at Two Bear Capital, to Montara’s Board of Directors. Landgraf expressed his enthusiasm, commenting: “Montara’s approach is differentiated since it activates the drug in the brain instead of using two drugs with counteracting effects on the same target or pathway. Its mission to develop a brain-only pharmacology platform has huge potential to bring safer and more effective therapies to patients suffering from brain disorders.”
Montara Therapeutics was founded in 2023 by Hertz, alongside scientific co-founders Professors Kevan Shokat, Thomas Südhof and Martin Kampmann. The company leverages the extensive expertise of its founders, including Shokat’s work on covalent inhibition to target KRAS G12C, a previously undruggable target, and Südhof’s Nobel Prize-winning research on vesicle trafficking. This team, coupled with a strategic collaboration with the Dementia Discovery Fund, positions Montara as a significant player on the neurological therapeutics landscape.
