Dantari
Dantari built polymer-based drug carriers that let an antibody deliver far more chemotherapy to a tumour than standard antibody-drug conjugates, while sparing the bone marrow. Its first medicine was tested in breast cancer before the company sold off its assets in 2025.
Overview
Dantari, Inc. (Thousand Oaks, California) emerged from stealth in December 2022 with a USD 47 million Series A led by Westlake Village BioPartners. Its Targeted High-capacity Drug Conjugate (T-HDC) platform, derived from Caltech research, enables drug-to-antibody ratios of about 60 with tunable payload release, and its biodistribution was designed to reduce bone marrow exposure. The lead clinical asset DAN-222, a non-targeted high-capacity drug conjugate carrying a topoisomerase 1 inhibitor, was evaluated in a phase 1/2 trial in metastatic HER2-negative breast cancer, with early dose-escalation results presented at SABCS 2022; DAN-311, a HER2-targeted T-HDC for HER2-positive and HER2-low breast cancer, was planned to enter the clinic in 2023. In January 2025 Endpoints News reported that Dantari was selling off its assets, and the company domain is now parked.
Funding
All startups| Round | Year | Amount | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A | 2022 | $47M | prnewswire.com |
Amounts only where the cited source states them. Rounds without a public source are not listed.
Notes
top- dantari.com is reachable but redirects to a parked landing page. Defunct status is based on the Endpoints News headline of 24 January 2025 ('Dantari sells off assets'); the article body is paywalled, so details of the wind-down are unverified. Breast cancer ids reflect the HER2-negative trial population and are an interpretation.
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