Jeffrey Tong

Jeffrey Tong is a Partner at Third Rock Ventures, a life-sciences venture firm focused on founding and building early-stage biotechnology companies. He joined Third Rock in 2016 as a venture partner and was named a Partner on December 13, 2018, alongside Christoph Lengauer. He draws on more than two decades of operating experience to focus on drug discovery and development across the firm's portfolio, integrating science, medicine, business, and strategy in company building.

Before Third Rock, Tong spent his career building and running biotech companies. He served as Executive Chairman of the board of Delinia, a company developing regulatory T-cell (Treg) therapeutics for autoimmune diseases that was acquired by Celgene in early 2017 for $300 million upfront plus up to ~$475 million in contingent milestones. He was previously CEO of Nora Therapeutics and a member of the founding management team of Infinity Pharmaceuticals. Earlier in his career he was a consultant at McKinsey & Co. and a founding researcher at the Harvard Bauer Center for Genomics Research. Across these roles he has raised capital from both equity markets and pharma partnerships and advanced programs from preclinical stages through Phase 3.

Tong completed his entire academic training at Harvard, earning an A.B. from Harvard College, an A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and an M.M.S. from Harvard Medical School. He maintains an affiliation with Harvard's Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology.

He is an active board member across the Third Rock portfolio, serving on the boards of Asher Biotherapeutics, Septerna, Rapport Therapeutics, ARTBIO, Candid Therapeutics, Marea Therapeutics, Maze Therapeutics, and Trace Neuroscience.

• Invests through Third Rock's company-creation model — co-founding and seeding new biotech companies around differentiated science, then building them from formation through clinical development.
• Focuses on drug discovery and development across the portfolio, applying deep operating experience (preclinical → Phase 3) rather than passive capital.
• Sector breadth within therapeutics: neuroscience (Rapport, Trace), immunology/autoimmune (Delinia, Asher, Candid), genetic and RNA medicine (Trace/ALS), targeted protein degradation and precision medicine (Maze, Marea, ARTBIO).
• Looks for strong founding science with a credible path to a medicine — e.g., he cited Biogen's approved ALS drug Qalsody as a precedent that "makes the company creation side of this and the clinical proof of concept…much more feasible" when backing Trace Neuroscience.
• Values experienced management and clear translational strategy, reflecting his own operator background (CEO/Executive Chairman roles) and McKinsey strategy training.