# Alex Federation

> Alex Federation is the co-founder and CEO of Talus Bio, a Seattle biotech building drugs for transcription factors, the gene-control proteins long written off as 'undruggable.' A Harvard-trained chemical biologist who studied under Jay Bradner, he invented the MARMOT platform to measure and modulate the regulome inside living cells, pairing functional proteomics with AI models trained on tens of millions of compound-target interactions. He teamed with proteomics scientist Lindsay Pino in 2020, went through Y Combinator, and has raised roughly $24.7M to chase first-in-class medicines for targets like Brachyury, AR-V7, and STAT3.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Talus Bio
- **Organizations:** Talus Bio, Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences, SEngine Precision Medicine, Harvard University
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Ph.D. in Chemical Biology (advisor: James/Jay Bradner), Harvard University, Postdoctoral / research training in computational epigenomics, University of Washington, Department of Genome Sciences, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (invented MARMOT platform), Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Talus Bio, a technology-enabled therapeutics company targeting the regulome, Invented the MARMOT platform (Multiplexed Assays for the Rational Modulation of Transcription Factors), Raised roughly $24.7M in total funding for Talus Bio

## Career timeline

- **—** — Earned Ph.D. in Chemical Biology at Harvard under Jay Bradner; dissertation on chemical and computational tools to study transcriptional regulation in cancer
- **2018** — Co-authored PNAS paper on BET bromodomain proteins regulating enhancer function during adipogenesis
- **—** — Postdoctoral fellow at Altius Institute in Seattle with John Stamatoyannopoulos and Fyodor Urnov; invented the MARMOT platform
- **—** — Lead Bioinformatics Scientist & Pharma Alliance Manager at SEngine Precision Medicine
- **2020** — Co-founded Talus Bio with Lindsay Pino
- **2021** — Talus Bio joins Y Combinator (Summer 2021 batch)
- **2022** — Talus Bio raises $9.75M seed round
- **2024** — Talus Bio raises $11.2M Seed+ round led by Two Bear Capital
- **2025** — Talus Bio presents preclinical transcription-factor therapeutic data at AACR Annual Meeting 2025

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Talus Bio, a technology-enabled therapeutics company targeting the regulome
- Invented the MARMOT platform (Multiplexed Assays for the Rational Modulation of Transcription Factors)
- Raised roughly $24.7M in total funding for Talus Bio
- Built what the company describes as the world's largest dataset for transcription factor activity
- Co-authored peer-reviewed research on BET bromodomains, enhancers, and transcriptional regulation in cancer
- Advanced AI-guided programs against historically intractable targets including Brachyury, AR-V7, and STAT3

## Latest updates

- **2024-08** — Talus Bio closed an $11.2M Seed+ round led by Two Bear Capital to advance its AI-enabled drug discovery platform.
- **2025-04** — Talus Bio presented preclinical data on transcription factor therapeutic programs at the AACR Annual Meeting 2025.

## Links

- Website: https://talus.bio
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/afederation

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/alex-federation
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-25