Talus Bio is a venture-backed early-stage biotechnology startup company working on drug development for gene regulators. Talus spun out of two leading institutions in September 2020 (University of Washington and Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences) and is located in Seattle, WA. We are building a data-enabled drug development platform that will focus primarily on small-molecule drug development in oncology.
Our platform measures a drug’s ability to disrupt a gene regulator within its natural, non-engineered cellular environment. Furthermore, a single experiment using the platform measures activity for about 1,000 gene regulators simultaneously, providing information on in-cell drug activity and specificity in a single experiment. To accomplish this, we combine innovative cell processing with high-sensitivity quantitative proteomics and advanced downstream analytics.
As a company, we focus on two parallel efforts to prove that our technology can open up the world of gene regulation for drug discovery:
- Developing internal programs against previously undruggable gene regulators in
cancers with poor standard of care
- Partnering with pharma, biotech, and academic labs to help progress their pipeline of gene regulator drugs
Our platform measures a drug’s ability to disrupt a gene regulator within its natural, non-engineered cellular environment. Furthermore, a single experiment using the platform measures activity for about 1,000 gene regulators simultaneously, providing information on in-cell drug activity and specificity in a single experiment. To accomplish this, we combine innovative cell processing with high-sensitivity quantitative proteomics and advanced downstream analytics.
As a company, we focus on two parallel efforts to prove that our technology can open up the world of gene regulation for drug discovery:
- Developing internal programs against previously undruggable gene regulators in
cancers with poor standard of care
- Partnering with pharma, biotech, and academic labs to help progress their pipeline of gene regulator drugs
Location: United States, Washington, Seattle
Employees: 11-50
Total raised: $16M
Founded date: 2020
Founders name: Alex Federation; Lindsay Pino
Investors 9
| Date | Name | Website |
| 22.09.2021 | FundersClu... | fundersclu... |
| 14.04.2022 | Fifty Year... | fiftyyears... |
| - | Reinforced... | reinforced... |
| 15.12.2021 | NFX | nfx.com |
| 27.01.2023 | Planet 9 C... | planet9ven... |
| 25.08.2021 | Y Combinat... | ycombinato... |
| - | North Sout... | northsouth... |
| 08.07.2022 | Creative D... | creativede... |
| - | Farvatn Ve... | farvatnven... |
Funding Rounds 3
| Date | Series | Amount | Investors |
| 20.08.2024 | - | $11.2M | - |
| 18.08.2023 | Grant | $4.3M | - |
| - | Seed | $500K | - |
Persons 13
| Date | First Name | Last Name | Title | Location | |||
| - | Margaux | McBirney | Lab Operat... | linkedin.c... | - | m*******y@... | - |
| - | Sebastian | Paez | Data Scien... | linkedin.c... | - | s***z@talu... | - |
| - | Eloma | Dosawat | Office Man... | linkedin.c... | - | e******t@t... | - |
| - | Julia | Robbins | Senior Res... | linkedin.c... | - | j******s@t... | - |
| - | Andrea | Gutierrez | Senior Res... | linkedin.c... | - | a********z... | - |
| - | Alex | Federation | Co-Founder... | linkedin.c... | - | a*********... | - |
| - | Michelle L... | Briscoe | Chief Oper... | linkedin.c... | - | m******e@t... | - |
| - | Brian | McEllin | Lead Scien... | linkedin.c... | - | b******n@t... | - |
| - | William | Fondrie | Manager, C... | linkedin.c... | - | w******e@t... | - |
| - | Yang | Gao | Lead/Princ... | linkedin.c... | - | y**o@talus... | - |
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Mentions in press and media 9
| Date | Title | Description |
| 18.12.2025 | PRISM BioLab and Talus Bioscience Join Forces to Discover Novel Inhibitors of Transcription Factor and Protein-Protein Interaction Targets | TOKYO, Dec. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- PRISM BioLab, Co. Ltd. ("PRISM") and Talus Bioscience, Inc. ("Talus Bio") announced today that they entered into a collaboration to discover novel Inhibitors of transcription factor (... |
| 20.08.2024 | Talus Bioscience Raises $11.2M in New Funding | Talus Biosciences, a Seattle, WA-based drug discovery company, raised $11.2M in Seed+ funding. The round was led by Two Bear Capital, with participation from WRF Capital, NFX, YC Continuity Fund, Funders Club VC, and BoxOne Ventures. The co... |
| 20.08.2024 | AI drug discovery company Talus Bioscience raises $11.2M | The company's platform, MARMOT, can identify molecules to block disease-causing proteins Talus Bioscience was founded to discover molecules that target transcription factors (TFs), or proteins that regulate the genome by binding to DNA and ... |
| 18.08.2023 | Talus Bioscience lands $4.3M in grant funding for drug discovery platform | Seattle-based biotech startup Talus Bioscience landed $4.3 million in non-dilutive grants to boost development of its drug discovery platform that seeks compounds that affect gene activity. The startup received $2.3 million from Spokane, Wa... |
| 06.06.2022 | Inspired by scientist CEOs, Seattle startup lands $9.75M to build up drug discovery platform | Talus co-founders, CTO Lindsay Pino (left) and CEO Alex Federation (right). (Talus Photos) A biotech startup born of an academic research project and inspired by emerging companies led by scientific founders is growing in Seattle. Talus Bio... |
| 25.01.2022 | Newly-formed Seattle VC firm aims to mine Univ. of Washington network for talent, innovation, money | The Husky mascot on the University of Washington campus. (GeekWire Photo / Aidan Grambihler) The University of Washington is an absolute research powerhouse, ranking fifth among U.S. universities in R&D expenditures. But even with more ... |
| 31.08.2021 | Here are all the companies from Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day, Part 1 | Today Y Combinator kicked off the Demo Day cycle for its Summer 2021 cohort. The collection of early-stage startups on day one-of-two alone numbered in the hundreds, meaning that we had to assemble a team here at TechCrunch just to cover it... |
| - | Y Combinator now plans to invest $500,000, with some strings attached, into companies that join its accelerator. Not all seed-stage VCs are thrilled about the change. | Y Combinator founders are now set to receive $500,000 when joining the famous accelerator. Y Combinator This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. The accelerator Y Combinator announ... |
| - | Talus Bio | “Talus Bioscience combines functional proteomics, automated biology, and machine learning to target hard-to-treat transcription factors driving cancer & beyond.” |