Nicolas Barthelemy

Nicolas M. Barthelemy is a French-American life-sciences executive with more than 30 years of operating, board and advisory experience across biopharma, diagnostics and life-science tools. He earned an engineering degree from the École Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI Paris) and a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and later completed the Program for Management Development at Harvard Business School (2000). He began his career as a senior project engineer in vaccine technology at Merck.

He spent roughly eight years at Biogen, rising to Vice President of Manufacturing and General Manager of the company's Research Triangle Park manufacturing organization. He then joined Life Technologies (formerly Invitrogen), where he held a series of senior roles including President of the Cell Systems Division, President of Global Commercial Operations and Chief Commercial Officer, through the company's 2014 acquisition by Thermo Fisher Scientific. From September 2014 to early 2017 he was President and CEO of bioTheranostics, a molecular-diagnostics company he spun off from bioMérieux and recapitalized — raising roughly $32M, doubling revenue to about $25M and accelerating growth.

His ties to the Mérieux ecosystem run through both bioMérieux (parent of bioTheranostics) and Mérieux Développement, the Institut Mérieux–affiliated healthcare investor where he served as a Senior Advisor (reported circa March 2016 – October 2018). Mérieux Développement / Mérieux Equity Partners is a Lyon-based investor managing roughly €1.5B and backing venture, growth and buyout deals in healthcare and nutrition across Europe and North America.

Today Barthelemy is concentrated in board and investor-facing roles. He is Executive Chairman of Slingshot Biosciences (director since 2021; elected Executive Chair in January 2024) and Executive Chairman of Biocare Medical (since 2019), a Senior Adviser to Warburg Pincus, and a long-serving independent director of Repligen Corporation (since June 2014). He has also held directorships at Fluidigm, GeneWiz, NanoCellect Biomedical, 908 Devices (2018), Avantor and Essen BioScience.

• Invests in and advises healthcare and life-science companies — diagnostics, bioprocessing/biologics, life-science tools, cell therapy and healthtech — the sectors where he has operated for 30+ years.
• Through Mérieux Développement, the focus is venture and growth investing in healthcare and nutrition companies "with products or services offering true differentiation and capacity to create substantial value over the long term," backed by Institut Mérieux's global network.
• Brings an operator's lens: companies that can scale commercially and manufacture at scale, given his background running global commercial operations and large-scale biologics manufacturing.
• Values M&A and exit optionality — he is described as having been involved in 50+ M&As, IPOs and exits, and tends to take active board/chairman roles rather than passive positions.
• Strong transatlantic angle (US operations + French engineering pedigree and Mérieux ties), making him well-suited to companies bridging US and European healthcare markets.