Mediar Therapeutics walked into 2026 like it had already read the room and decided patience was overrated. An oversubscribed $76M Series B, announced January 7, co-led by Amplitude Ventures and ICG, with Longwood Fund, Asahi Kasei Pharma Ventures, Alexandria Real Estate Trust, and the entire Series A syndicate showing up again. Capital does not chase noise at this altitude. It follows conviction, timing, and receipts.
Founded in 2019 out of Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with Mass General Brigham Ventures laying the early foundation, Mediar Therapeutics went after fibrosis with a surgeon’s mindset, not a marketing one. Fibrosis sits behind roughly 45% of deaths in the industrialized world, hiding in plain sight across organs, decades, and balance sheets. Most companies circle inflammation and hope the downstream damage behaves. Mediar Therapeutics went straight to the myofibroblast, the cell actually pouring the concrete.
CEO Rahul Ballal understands how to run a company with public, market discipline without strangling innovation. Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder Paul Yaworsky spent more than 21 years at Pfizer building fibrosis programs before fibrosis was fashionable. Executive Chairman Simon Sturge has seen enough cycles to know when science, capital, and execution line up. CMO Jeffrey Bornstein brings the clinical rigor needed when the stakes are human, not hypothetical.
Three antibodies, three organs, one thesis. MTX-474 is moving through a Phase 2a study in systemic sclerosis with FDA Orphan Drug and Fast Track designations already secured. MTX-463 is in Phase 2 for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, backed by a global licensing agreement with Eli Lilly that delivered $99M upfront and near-term payments, with up to $687M more tied to progress. MTX-439 is advancing toward the clinic in chronic kidney disease, lining up its IND with Phase 1 planned for 1H 2026. Skin, lung, kidney. Fibrosis does not get to pick its battlefield.
The investor roster reads like a quiet alignment of adults in the room. Novartis Venture Fund, Sofinnova Partners, Pfizer Ventures, Bristol Myers Squibb, Ono Venture Investment, Asahi Kasei Pharma Ventures. Five major pharma players do not converge unless something structural is working. With Amplitude Ventures and ICG joining the board, the signal tightens, not the noise.
What separates Mediar Therapeutics is restraint. Conventional IgG1 antibodies. Blood-based biomarkers. Precision without theatrics. No dependency on exotic modalities to explain away risk. Boston science, global ambition, and enough capital to reach real data. In fibrosis, stopping progression is leverage. Leverage, applied cleanly, changes outcomes.
Startups Startup Funding Venture Capital Series B Biotech Healthcare Health Tech Drug Development Data Data Driven Technology Innovation Tech Ecosystem Startup Ecosystem DCTalks
