Dantari Raises $47 Million in Tumor Therapy Efforts
Posted on 12/14/2022
Dantari, Inc. is a clinical stage biotechnology company committed to creating breakthrough therapies for the treatment of cancer and other serious diseases. Dantari raised US$ 47 million in Series A financing. The Series A financing was led by Westlake Village BioPartners and included participation from Corner Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, and Caltech. Dantari also announced the appointment of Richard A. Markus, M.D., Ph.D., as president and chief executive officer, and its board of directors, chaired by Sean Harper, M.D., a co-founding managing director at Westlake.
Proceeds from the financing support the advancement of Dantari’s differentiated antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) and chemotherapeutic platforms. Dantari’s platform of T-HDC (Targeted High-capacity Drug Conjugate) technology enables a significantly higher drug-antibody ratio (DAR) and tunable-release of chemotherapy compared to today’s ADCs. Dantari’s next-generation targeted therapeutics can deliver larger payloads with a DAR of 60 for greater efficacy, and their biodistribution reduces bone marrow exposure, providing broad therapeutic potential.
Dantari’s lead clinical investigational product is DAN-222, a novel HDC chemotherapeutic agent with a topoisomerase 1 inhibitor (topo1) payload. The use of topo1 products is often limited due to bone marrow toxicity. Because of its low bone marrow exposure in preclinical models, DAN-222 has the potential to broaden indications and provide new utility as a combination therapy with PARP inhibitors and other agents. DAN-222 is being evaluated in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial for the treatment of metastatic human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER) 2-negative breast cancer.
