Formation Bio Appoints Michael Ehlers as Chief Scientific Officer & Head of R&D

Formation Bio, an AI-native pharma company, has appointed Michael D. Ehlers, MD, PhD, as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and Head of Research & Development (R&D).

Ehlers will provide end-to-end scientific and R&D leadership across Formation Bio, and oversee portfolio strategy and advancement, from translational sciences through clinical development. He will also guide the scientific direction of Formation Bio’s AI platform.

“We built Formation Bio around the idea that the best scientists and the best technology should work together,” said Benjamine Liu, Co-Founder and CEO of Formation Bio. “Mike has operated at this intersection his entire career, and he’s going to be central to how we pick, design, and progress programs that we believe can have an enormous impact on patients worldwide.”

Experience

Ehlers joins from MPM BioImpact, where he was an Entrepreneur Partner. He previously founded four companies as Partner and CSO at Apple Tree Partners – three of which are now clinical-stage – including Ascidian Therapeutics, which he led as founding CEO.

Additionally, Ehlers was Executive Vice President of R&D at Biogen and Group Senior Vice President of BioTherapeutics Research at Pfizer, where he also held the title of Chief Scientific Officer for Neuroscience. Throughout his career, programs advanced under Ehlers’ leadership have produced six approved drugs spanning five indications and four drug modalities, with more than 40 programs advanced into the clinic.

Before moving into industry, Ehlers was the George Barth Geller Professor of Neurobiology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Duke University Medical Center. He holds a BS in chemistry from Caltech and an MD and PhD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Across his career, Ehlers has worked at every stage of the drug discovery and development process, from early research through clinical development and portfolio strategy.

“I have spent years watching good science get directed toward the wrong patients, or stuck in development timelines that have not meaningfully improved in decades. I am excited about being part of a company that moves fast and building a pharma model fit for the current era of technology,” said Ehlers. “Formation Bio is the most serious effort that I have encountered to reimagine what is achievable for drug development. I am eager to do things differently and lead a fundamentally new way of bringing more new drugs to patients, faster.”