The global biotech market is expected to be worth more than $ 3 trillion by 2030. A new company has emerged from stealth mode to capitalize on that opportunity.
Dantari is developing targeted therapeutics to treat patients with cancer. The biotech's IP is the brainchild of Mark Davis, a professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology.
Dantari emerged from stealth mode after raising $47 million in a Series A round. Westlake Village BioPartners led the round, with additional backing from Corner Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments and Caltech.
Foundation
Richard Markus, Dantari’s CEO, started Dantari in 2019 in Thousand Oaks. Before that, he was the VP of global development for Amgen, a biotech research company, also in Thousand Oaks.
Sean Harper, managing partner of Westlake Village BioPartners, introduced Markus and Davis in 2018. Davis is on Dantari’s board of directors.
Dantari’s treatments are the culmination of 20 years of research in Davis’ Caltech lab. The treatments are in the class of ADCs, which are intended to target and kill tumor cells while keeping healthy cells intact.
Markus said Dantari’s technology carries “10 times the chemotherapy payload” of competitors.
“A lot of companies are developing ADCs, but they are the ‘traditional’ ADC constructs,” Markus explained. “There are also a few companies developing a different high-capacity construct...and some of those will likely try to add targeting agents.”
But those treatments are encapsulated, he said, so the amount of chemotherapy being released can’t be adjusted. But Dantari’s system is adjustable, so it can deliver larger quantities of drugs, he added.
“When using chemotherapy to reduce or eliminate cancer tumors, generally more chemotherapy is better, even when targeted, so when it is in the tumor it can kill more of the cancer cells,” he said.
Milestones
Dantari’s lead chemotherapy program entered its Phase 1 clinical study early this year and "is advancing quickly within that study,” Davis said.
The company hopes to achieve its next two clinical milestones around the same time, by the second half of this year. One is for the lead program to advance to the next phase. The other is for a second program to start its Phase 1 clinical study. Both treat breast cancer.
Another goal for this year is opening a Series B round, Markus said. He declined to disclose how much that round might be.
Dantari has 20 employees. Its headquarters include offices and labs in Thousand Oaks, a city that’s “ripe with scientific talent, experienced drug developers and business entrepreneurs, all key to the success of a small biotech company,” Markus told L.A. Inno.
