Dr. Axel Bouchon

Biography

 Dr. Axel Bouchon has been a member of the Bayer R&D Executive Committee and Head of the Bayer Lifescience Center since January 1, 2015.  Axel Bouchon was born in Reutlingen / Germany on March 28, 1973. In 1998, he received his degree in biochemistry, organic chemistry and immunology from Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen / Germany. He wrote his diploma thesis at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and earned his doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) from Tübingen in 2002 with a dissertation that he executed at the Basel Institute for Immunology of Roche AG. Bouchon commenced his professional career at Cytos Biotechnology AG in Zurich. In 2002, he transferred to Bayer AG as a laboratory manager at the Pharmaceutical Research Center in Wuppertal. This was followed by a variety of managerial functions with increasing responsibility, such as providing support for the Bayer CropScience Executive Council after the acquisition of Aventis CropScience, and working in portfolio and strategic alignment for the Pharmaceuticals business area during the Bayer/Schering integration. From 2007, he was active in Mergers & Acquisitions for Bayer HealthCare's Pharmaceuticals Division. In 2010 he moved to Asia where he headed the Pharmaceuticals business in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei. In 2012, Axel Bouchon returned to Germany where he was responsible for the strategy of the Bayer HealthCare subgroup covering pharmaceuticals, consumer and animal health products and medical devices.  In 2013 Bouchon joined Moderna Therapeutics Inc. in Cambridge, MA as Senior Vice President and a member of the Executive Committee concerned with the initiation of new business ventures. In that role he founded, financed and managed start-up companies concentrating on human, animal and plant diseases based on the Moderna technology platform. Axel Bouchon returned to Bayer on January 1, 2015 to design, build and run the Bayer Lifescience Center, a new R&D unit of Bayer focusing on new, cross-divisional technologies with fundamental breakthrough potential.  

Research Interest

 biochemistry, organic chemistry and immunology