Breaking The Mold — A New Perspective On Alzheimer's

By Jennifer Ringler, Contributing Writer

Casey Lynch, CEO and cofounder of San Francisco-based Cortexyme, has been fascinated by Alzheimer’s disease throughout her career, even dating back to her graduate work at UCSF. And while other biotech and pharmaceutical companies have been needling away at the problem (without much success) for more than two decades, largely by looking to beta amyloid and tau proteins as the culprit, Lynch has long had the gut feeling that there was something else going on behind the scenes. As it turns out, she was right — looking at years of research, mounting evidence shows that a bacterial infection in the brain is at the root of Alzheimer’s disease.