Former Company
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
Former Position
Vice president and general manager
M2Gen, a health informatics solutions company focused on accelerating the discovery, development and delivery of precision medicine, announced today the appointment of Helge Bastian, Ph.D., as president and chief executive officer (CEO). Bastian succeeds M2Gen Executive Chair William S. Dalton, M.D., Ph.D., who has served as interim CEO since September 2018.
“Dr. Bastian has a proven track record of building profitable and sustainable businesses in the life sciences and healthcare sectors including many years of experience in leading clinical research and biobanking organizations supporting precision medicine approaches. We are excited to have Dr. Bastian join M2Gen and lead our company to the next level as we deliver health information solutions that link patient-specific clinical and molecular data with the objective of developing and delivering personalized medicine for patients. With Dr. Bastian at the helm, M2Gen will continue to grow and advance the company’s mission to learn from each patient and proactively develop therapeutic options to meet patient needs,” said Dalton.
Dr. Bastian is an experienced executive and scientific leader with more than 27 years of international experience while contributing to the growth of leading life science and healthcare companies in Germany, Switzerland and the USA. His expertise spans, molecular and synthetic biology including game-changing technologies such as genome editing, gene synthesis and re-programming, molecular and companion diagnostics, clinical research, drug development, pharmaceutical manufacturing and biobanking. As M2Gen’s new CEO, he will focus on expanding the company’s business portfolio and growing the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network® (ORIEN), an alliance of biopharmaceutical companies and leading cancer centers, powered by M2Gen’s data and informatics platforms that work in collaboration to address the greatest challenges in oncology drug development. He will also join M2Gen’s Board of Directors.
“I am very excited about M2Gen’s revolutionizing data-driven approach to precision medicine in such an important area as oncology that affects so many people’s lives. I look forward to bringing my leadership experiences from the life science and healthcare industry to M2Gen and taking the company to the next level of its exciting growth strategy,” said Bastian. “Understanding a patient’s genetic predisposition and the real-time molecular patterns in a patient’s tumor in combination with his / her clinical data is paramount to unravel the molecular mechanisms responsible for cancer development, and for developing new drugs and therapies as well as for accurate patient enrolling to clinical trials and even for developing strategies for cancer prevention. M2Gen’s initiative to build this unique and growing healthcare ecosystem of cancer centers to support clinical and molecular data sharing from a large number of cancer patients via M2Gen’s platforms is designed to fundamentally change the way cancer is being studied and treated, and will accelerate the discovery and development of precision treatment options for patients.”
Dr. Bastian joins M2Gen from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., where he led the Sample Preparation and Synthetic Biology businesses as Vice President and General Manager since 2014. Before Thermo Fisher Scientific, Dr. Bastian held a number of senior leadership positions and served as a member of several executive leadership teams, including Managing Director and Chief Commercial Officer at Indivumed, an integrated oncology company; Vice President Global Marketing, Business Development and Strategy at Sigma-Aldrich (now Merck KGaA); Executive Vice President Life Science Services for SGS, the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. Prior to SGS, he held various management positions during his 11-plus years at Qiagen including Vice President Molecular Diagnostics, Vice President Global Strategic Marketing, and Vice President PreAnalytiX, a QIAGEN / Becton Dickinson joint venture. Dr. Bastian earned his diploma in biology / biochemistry from Georg-August University and holds a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology performed at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. From 2014-2018, Dr. Bastian served as a board member to the International Gene Synthesis Consortium (IGSC). Dr. Bastian has recently been appointed to the board of directors at enzymatic gene synthesis pioneer Molecular Assemblies, Inc., San Diego, and is an alumnus from the Max-Planck-Network and the Columbia Business School.
