Industry veterans from Thermo Fisher and Agilent join the board
SAN DIEGO, August 6, 2019 — Molecular Assemblies, Inc. today announced the appointment of Helge Bastian, Ph.D. and David Hwang to the company’s board of directors. Dr. Bastian has more than 27 years of international leadership experience in leading life science and healthcare corporations that deliver innovative products, services, and capabilities. Mr. Hwang has more than 18 years of experience in corporate development, venture investment, corporate financing, and M&A.
“We welcome Helge and David to the board of directors. They bring exceptional synthetic biology experience in growing companies with breakthrough commercial products and service solutions for life sciences and medical technologies,” stated Larry Stambaugh, chairman of the board.
Michael J. Kamdar, President and CEO of Molecular Assemblies said, “I look forward to working with Helge and David as the company advances our proprietary enzymatic DNA synthesis technology to reliably, affordably, and sustainably produce long, high quality DNA that can be used for many innovation applications, including novel therapeutics and diagnostics and DNA data storage.”
Dr. Bastian most recently led the Sample Preparation and Synthetic Biology businesses at Thermo Fisher Scientific as Vice President and General Manager. He commented, “I am impressed with Molecular Assemblies’ approach to cost-effective, sustainable, and scalable DNA manufacturing, and I look forward to helping them serve research pioneers around the world to leverage the true potential of DNA to accelerate innovation in a wide range of industries for a sustainable future.”
Mr. Hwang currently is a Senior Director of Strategy and Corporate Development at Agilent Technologies, Inc. and a Managing Director in Agilent’s Early Stage Partnership Program that helps early stage companies navigate the complex life science ecosystem.
Mr. Hwang added, “With a proprietary technology position, Molecular Assemblies has the potential to enable breakthroughs in life sciences, information storage, synthetic biology, and electronics. I am excited to work with the other members of the board and the team to achieve the promise of enzymatic DNA synthesis.”
Before Thermo Fisher Scientific, Dr. Bastian served as a member of the executive leadership teams and held a number of senior leadership positions 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. Between 2014-2018, Dr. Bastian served as a board member to the International Gene Synthesis Consortium (IGSC) and is an alumnus from the Max-Planck-Network and the Columbia Business School.
Mr. Hwang has worked on several transformational initiatives including the spinoff of Keysight Technologies from Agilent in 2014 and Agilent’s $2.2 billion acquisition of Dako, a Danish cancer diagnostics company. Prior to joining Agilent, Mr. Hwang held several senior roles at boutique investment banks in New York City and San Francisco. He holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MBA from Rutgers University.
About Molecular Assemblies
Molecular Assemblies, Inc. is a private biotech company developing an enzymatic DNA synthesis technology designed to power the next generation of DNA-based products. The company’s patented enzymatic method, based on making DNA the way nature makes DNA, produces long, high quality, sequence-specific DNA reliably, affordably, and sustainably. Molecular Assemblies’ technology will enable the reading and writing of DNA for industries including industrial synthetic biology and precision medicine, as well as emerging applications of DNA for data information storage, nanomachines, and bio-based electronics. Molecular Assemblies is headquartered in San Diego.
Media Contact: Jessica Yingling, Ph.D., Little Dog Communications Inc., jessica@litldog.com, +1.858.344.8091
