Dr. Dirk Beher, CEO of FundamentalPharma GmbH

Dirk Beher (Ph.D.) is an accomplished founder, serial chief executive officer and board director in European biotech with global outreach. As a longtime biotech executive, including 10 years as chief executive officer, he has more than a quarter of a century of pharma and biotech CNS drug discovery experience with a strong record of executing innovation and value creation.

Dirk previously led Asceneuron for over a decade, a neurodegeneration biotech he created as a pharma spin-off in Switzerland. Under his tenure Asceneuron raised a substantial amount of capital including non-dilutive funding and developed two CNS-active molecules from early discovery to Phase 2 (O-GlcNAcase inhibitors ASN90/FNP223 licensed to the Spanish biopharma Ferrer and ASN51).

Prior to his executive roles in biotech, he spent 14 years in pharmaceutical drug discovery leading R&D teams around the globe at Merck Sharp & Dohme (UK), Amgen (USA) and Merck Serono (CH). He was educated at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Germany and holds a Ph.D. and a Diploma (M.S.) in Biology. He is an inventor of numerous patents and author of over 50 peer-reviewed publications and reviews in the field of neurodegeneration.