The science speaks. He makes it pay.
At Autobahn Therapeutics, the molecules are designed to slip past the brain's most stubborn checkpoint. Will Stratton's job is to make sure the company has the runway to get them there.
As Chief Business Officer and Head of Strategy and Planning, Stratton sits where the lab meets the ledger. Autobahn is a San Diego company built on a brain-targeting chemistry platform, a set of techniques for tuning where a small molecule goes once it enters the body, dialing exposure up in the brain and down everywhere else. The lead candidate, ABX-002, is an orally administered thyroid hormone receptor beta agonist being developed for major depressive disorder and bipolar depression. Translating that mouthful into financing, partnerships, and a plan is the part Stratton owns.
In July 2024 the company closed an oversubscribed $100 million Series C, led by Newpath Partners with Canaan, Monograph Capital, Insight Partners and a roster of returning backers including ARCH Venture Partners and BVF. The round pushed ABX-002 toward two Phase 2 trials and moved a second program, a brain-penetrant compound called ABX-101, into the clinic. Total capital raised across the company's life now sits north of $200 million. Rounds like that do not close themselves.
Bench first. Boardroom second.
Most biotech business chiefs come up through banking or law. Stratton came up through a fume hood. He earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale - the kind of training that teaches you to respect data before you spin it. Then he went to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania for an MBA, with majors in healthcare management and entrepreneurial management, and pointed all of it at the same problem: how do you put a price on a molecule that does not exist yet?
That dual fluency is rare. In a partnering meeting he can follow the pharmacology when the chief scientific officer goes deep, then pivot to the deal terms without missing a beat. He started his career in management consulting, advising life sciences clients on business development and commercial strategy - the apprenticeship that taught him to size markets and read pipelines from the outside before he ran one from the inside.
A tour of CNS and precision medicine
Before Autobahn, Stratton built a resume that reads like a map of where the hard problems live. At NAVICAN - since folded into Intermountain Precision Genomics - he worked in business development and strategic planning around precision oncology. At Rakuten Medical he ran global business and corporate development with a focus on early-stage R&D dealmaking, the unglamorous early work of deciding which science is worth a bet. At Avelas Biosciences he was Vice President of Business Development, leading corporate development, financing, corporate strategy, and investor relations - effectively the full CBO toolkit, one title below the name.
Each stop sharpened the same instinct: capital follows conviction, and conviction follows data you can defend. By the time he reached Autobahn, the company was building exactly the kind of validated-biology, brain-first pipeline he had spent a decade learning to evaluate.
Strategy is the molecule you can't patent.
Strip away the titles and the work is a series of bets. Which programs get funded. Which get paused. Which partner gets a seat at the table, and on what terms. Stratton's remit - business development, corporate strategy, and planning - is the connective tissue between a discovery team that wants to chase every promising compound and a board that wants discipline. The job is saying no to good ideas so the great ones get fully funded.
Neuroscience is the graveyard of biotech ambition. The brain rejects most drugs at the door, trials are long, and depression in particular has humbled deeper-pocketed companies. Autobahn's wager is that better chemistry - tuning peripheral versus central exposure, building disease-specific distribution profiles - changes those odds. Stratton's wager is that the right capital, deployed at the right milestones, gives that chemistry enough time to prove itself.
Through 2025 and into 2026 the company kept showing up where capital gets allocated: Evercore's emerging private biotech conference, Leerink's private company connect, the Jefferies London healthcare conference, and the 25th Annual Needham Virtual Healthcare Conference in April 2026. Those rooms are where private biotechs audition for their next round and their eventual exit. Stratton helps decide what story gets told in them.
A bet on biology, backed by capital.
Depression and bipolar depression are not niche markets - they are vast, underserved, and stubbornly resistant to the medicines we have. A thyroid-hormone-receptor approach that reaches the brain cleanly would be a genuinely different tool. Whether ABX-002 becomes that tool is a question for the clinic. Whether Autobahn has the runway and the partners to find out is, in large part, a question for Will Stratton.
He is the quiet half of the equation. Scientists get the patents and the podium time. Someone has to make sure the lights stay on, the trials get funded, and the next round closes oversubscribed. That someone speaks fluent molecule and fluent money - and so far, the market keeps agreeing with him.