Think Bioscience

# Think Bioscience: High-Level Overview

Think Bioscience is a synthetic biology company that develops small-molecule drugs targeting historically difficult-to-drug proteins.[7] Founded in 2021 by Jerome Fox, Matt Taylor, and Philip Jeng as a spinout from CU Boulder, the company reimagines drug discovery by harnessing microbial systems rather than traditional computational or chemical approaches.[1][4] Think Bioscience addresses a critical gap in pharmaceutical development: many disease-relevant proteins have been deemed "undruggable" because they lack the binding pockets that conventional drugs exploit. The company serves the broader biotech and therapeutics ecosystem by expanding the universe of targetable proteins, with initial focus areas including oncology, autoimmune disease, and metabolic disorders.[3]

The company's growth trajectory reflects strong market validation. Think Bioscience raised $17 million in an oversubscribed seed round in August 2022, led by Innovation Endeavors and Xora Innovation,[3] and subsequently raised $26 million in additional funding.[4] As of May 2025, the company was in Series B funding stage.[4] Leadership includes Gary Yeung (CEO) and Mitchell Kossar, with Yeung bringing extensive experience from Genentech and other biotech firms.[2]

# Origin Story

Think Bioscience emerged directly from academic research at CU Boulder's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and BioFrontiers Institute, where Jerome Fox developed the foundational technology.[4] The company's founding in 2021 represented a deliberate translation of Fox's lab research into a commercial platform. The team demonstrated proof of concept by successfully targeting PTP1B, a protein implicated in HER2+ breast cancer, diabetes, and obesity—a protein previously considered undruggable.[1] This early validation attracted institutional investors and positioned the company as a novel approach to a persistent industry challenge.

# Core Differentiators

Think Bioscience's competitive advantages center on its unique technological platform:

• Biological computation approach: Rather than relying solely on computational chemistry or structural biology, the company programs microbes with a drug design challenge—essentially encoding "inhibit this target or die" into bacterial systems.[6] This harnesses billions of years of evolutionary optimization compressed into a laboratory setting.

• Functional assay in living cells: The platform operates in a crowded cellular environment where target proteins behave as they would in real biological systems, not in artificial in vitro conditions.[6] This increases the likelihood that discovered compounds will work in actual therapeutic contexts.

• Integrated biosynthesis: The microbes simultaneously serve as both the discovery engine and the manufacturing platform, eliminating the need for complex chemical synthesis or sourcing plant extracts globally.[6] This dramatically reduces development timelines and costs.

• Broad target applicability: The platform has been successfully extended across multiple protein classes—protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs), kinases (PTKs), proteases, and GTPases—demonstrating platform versatility beyond initial proof of concept.[2]

• Interdisciplinary team: The company combines experts at the intersection of synthetic biology and drug discovery, including synthetic biologists, computational chemists, medicinal chemists, and structural biologists.[5]

# Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Think Bioscience operates at the convergence of two powerful trends: the maturation of synthetic biology as a practical tool and the growing recognition that computational approaches alone cannot solve drug discovery's "undruggability" problem. The company represents what investors call "Super Evolution applied to drug discovery"—using directed evolution principles at scale to solve problems that have resisted traditional approaches.[6]

The timing is particularly significant because the pharmaceutical industry faces a productivity crisis: despite massive R&D spending, the number of novel drugs approved annually has stagnated. Think Bioscience's platform addresses this by expanding the addressable target space, potentially unlocking billions in value by making previously inaccessible proteins druggable. As a CU Boulder spinout, the company also strengthens the regional biotech ecosystem and demonstrates how academic research can translate into commercially viable platforms.

# Quick Take & Future Outlook

Think Bioscience is positioned to become a foundational platform company in synthetic biology-driven drug discovery. The company's progression from seed funding to Series B, combined with successful proof-of-concept demonstrations, suggests the market validates its core thesis. Key milestones to watch include advancement of pipeline programs toward clinical trials and expansion into additional therapeutic areas beyond oncology, autoimmune, and metabolic disease.

The company's influence will likely extend beyond its own pipeline: as Think Bioscience demonstrates that biological computation can solve "undruggable" problems, other biotech firms may adopt similar approaches, reshaping how the industry thinks about drug discovery. In a landscape where traditional methods have hit diminishing returns, Think Bioscience represents a genuinely novel path forward—one that treats biology not as a constraint to overcome through chemistry, but as a partner in the design process itself.