Montara Therapeutics, Inc.

Montara Therapeutics revealed the one-two therapeutic punch behind its BrainOnly platform on Tuesday, as well as an $8-million seed round to progress its first drug combo for neurological diseases. The company aims to overcome a long-standing safety issue associated with drugs designed to be active in the brain — they often lead to on-target, off-tissue peripheral side effects.To ensure therapeutic activity is concentrated within the brain, Montara uses its BrainOnly platform to develop two-drug combinations. The first component is intended to penetrate the blood-brain-barrier to act against a specific neurological target, and the second is designed to block any peripheral activity from the former.   “It’s well understood that uncontrolled peripheral side effects or toxicities associated with brain-targeting drugs are often the barrier to promising treatments,” Montara CEO Nicholas Hertz said. “We hope to eliminate this obstacle with our BrainOnly platform, unlocking many previously undruggable neurological targets.” The company pointed to the Parkinson’s disease drug duo, carbidopa and levodopa, as validation for the use of a combination that includes a peripheral blocker to treat neurological disorders. Montara said that while the approach is supported scientifically, it will be the first company to utilise an “efficient and scalable platform to systematically develop” drug combinations in this fashion.Montara holds an exclusive licence to the BrainOnly platform from the University of California, San Francisco.Nearing the clinicTuesday’s seed round was led by SV Health Investors’ Dementia Discovery Fund along with Two Bear Capital, and also featured participation from Dolby Family Ventures and KdT Ventures. The financing will help Montara move its lead programme — a drug with a proven clinical benefit for neurological diseases but severe dose-limiting peripheral toxicities, paired with a universal peripheral blocker — toward the clinic. Additionally, the biotech has begun chemistry work on other candidates for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The funds will also go towards future partnerships, Hertz added. SV’s Dirk Landgraf, who joined Montara’s board in conjunction with the funding, said the BrainOnly 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.”