Hilmar Bading co-founded FundaMental Pharma GmbH, bringing academic neurobiology expertise into the biotech sector.

Hilmar Bading established how synaptic activity controls neuronal gene expression critical for memory and neuroprotection, identifying nuclear calcium as the central mediator. He uncovered the dual roles of NMDA receptors, showing that synaptic NMDA receptors promote neuronal survival, whereas extrasynaptic NMDA receptors trigger neurodegeneration and cell death.

At FundaMental Pharma, his key contribution lies in translating his discovery that TRPM4 mediates the neurotoxic signaling of extrasynaptic NMDA receptors into a novel class of neuroprotective small-molecule drug leads, offering new therapeutic strategies to combat neurodegenerative diseases.

Hilmar Bading studied medicine at Heidelberg University (MD in 1984) and carried out his doctoral thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. He received postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin (1985–1989) and at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA (1989–1993), and was a Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK (1993-2001).

Since 2001 he has been Professor of Neurobiology and Director of the Neurobiology Institute and the Interdisciplinary Center for Neurosciences (IZN) at Heidelberg University. He is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.