Think Bioscience Raises $55M in Series A Funding
Think Bioscience didn’t arrive with slogans or science-fair optimism. It arrived with receipts. The University of Colorado Boulder spinout closed a $55M oversubscribed Series A from Boulder, reminding the market that the most dangerous ideas in biotech are often the quiet ones. Founded in September 2019, Think has spent six years going after proteins most of the field labeled undruggable, and asking a more irritating question: what if the problem isn’t the protein, but how we keep interrogating it?
The pairing makes sense on inspection. Dr. Jerome Fox licensed the core IP from CU Boulder, where his lab showed synthetic biology could expose functional binding pockets structure alone never reveals. Philip Jeng brought the operator brain, Genentech, ZS Associates, Neurophth Therapeutics, an HBS MBA, and the habit of turning complexity into execution. Think wasn’t rushed. It was pressure-tested.
The Series A was led by Regeneron Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, and Janus Henderson Investors, with T.A. Springer, CE-Ventures, MBX Capital, and YK Bioventures joining. Existing investors AV8 Ventures, CU Innovations, and Buff Gold Ventures doubled down because progress kept compounding. As Innovation Endeavors’ Nick Olsen put it, this team is succeeding where others failed, a line that carries weight in drug discovery.
Think runs its platform like a biological cage match. Microbes are engineered with one rule: inhibit the target or die. That pressure reveals real, functional binding pockets across transcription factors, phosphatases, kinases, proteases, and GTPases. This isn’t theoretical chemistry, it’s discovery inside living systems, producing chemical matter medicinal chemists can actually advance.
The lead program targets Noonan syndrome (~1 in 2,500 births), marked by cardiac and lymphatic complications, short stature, cognitive impairment, and chronic pain. There’s no FDA-approved therapy addressing the underlying genetics. Think is advancing a first-in-class small molecule aimed at the source, not the symptoms.
In May 2025, Think expanded its partnership with CrystalsFirst, adding structure-based discovery to a stack already fluent in microbiology, enzymology, computational, and medicinal chemistry. Based in Boulder’s post-Array Biopharma talent ecosystem, those feedback loops matter. Fox was named a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors in 2024. Board member Dr. Nicholas A. Saccomano brings decades of FDA wins from Array Biopharma and Pfizer. Advisors like Dr. Wendy Young, Dr. Larry Burgess, and David Chantry know how brutal this work gets, which is why their presence signals substance, not decoration.
Think Bioscience has now raised $81M total. The capital advances the Noonan program toward IND and fuels parallel shots in oncology, autoimmune, and metabolic disease. Most proteins still say no. Think just keeps asking better questions, and the answers are getting harder to ignore.