The President and CEO of Phathom Pharmaceuticals has lived with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) for years, and by his own account the switch to his own company's drug rewrote his daily life. "I put Tabasco on things. I sincerely enjoy spicy foods. I just couldn't have spicy food for 10 years," he said, describing eight years on omeprazole that never quite did the job. "As soon as I started taking this drug… it's totally different."

The drug is VOQUEZNA, a potassium-competitive acid blocker that Phathom licensed from Takeda and is now commercializing across the United States. It raises stomach pH and holds it more consistently than the PPIs that have been standard care for three decades. By some published estimates, 40% of GERD patients stay in pain on older therapies. "That's our population," Basta said.

Basta took over in April 2025, when the company was mid-launch with revenue to report and momentum to protect. It was familiar terrain for someone with over 25 years of experience in the sector, including building a medical aesthetics business at BioForm Medical and Merz and launching one of the first prescription digital therapeutics for IBS at Mahana.

His first move at Phathom was to listen. He spent weeks with the sales team, then followed their lead and refocused the company on gastroenterologists, where the patients in real pain land. "This is just a matter of listening," he said. By the end of 2025, Phathom has crossed one million prescriptions and was signaling toward operating profitability in the second half of 2026.

Ask him for his north star and he points to his father, a cardiologist and lifelong role model now in his 90s. Basta said his father’s priority was always delivering “an amazing outcome for this patient.” For a company chasing tens of millions of sufferers, it is a fitting creed. "If we can improve treatment for tens of millions of patients," he said, "what a great contribution to be able to make."