Founded in 2007, Cognition Therapeutics develops disease-modifying therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions, including its lead candidate Zervimesine, a first-in-class therapy designed to protect brain synapses before irreversible neuronal decline occurs. Co-founder Susan Catalano relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to Pittsburgh in 2007 to build the company’s lab from scratch, drawn by the region’s concentration of neuroscience talent and lower cost of operations. Fourteen years later, the company went public on Nasdaq, and it continues to advance Zervimesine through clinical trials today.
Betting on Pittsburgh
Susan Catalano spent over a decade in the pharmaceutical industry in the San Francisco Bay Area before she set out to build a company of her own. She wanted to develop disease-modifying therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease, treatments capable of stopping the disease’s progression rather than just easing its symptoms. In 2007, she and several co-founders, all seasoned entrepreneurs, launched Cognition Therapeutics around that idea.
Pittsburgh wasn’t an obvious choice for a Bay Area pharma veteran, but Catalano knew the city well: its concentration of neuroscience talent, its lower cost of operations, and its Ben Franklin Technology Partners network, of which Innovation Works is a part. “The welcome mat that was rolled out by the economic development agencies within Pittsburgh, including Innovation Works, sealed the deal for us,” Catalano recalled. She relocated from the Bay Area to Pittsburgh in 2007, alone at first, and started building the company’s lab from scratch.
She attracted Cognition’s first investor, built out the laboratory, and began screening for new drug targets to modify the course of Alzheimer’s disease. Then the Great Recession hit. “It became really difficult, it was really a crunch,” Catalano said. “A lot of companies didn’t survive that.” Cognition made it through on a mix of investor support and non-dilutive capital, drawing on early Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants and later, more expensive, clinical-stage funding from the National Institutes of Health, more than $100 million in total, by Catalano’s account.
Innovation Works backed the company early and stayed involved well beyond that first seed round, connecting Cognition with a network of investors and advocating for the company within those circles. “Without that stamp of approval that comes from IW really early on in the company’s history, it would have been very challenging for us to proceed,” Catalano said.
“IW as an organization was extremely supportive, not only with follow-on funding rounds after that initial seed round, but also in connecting us with a network of investors and really advocating on behalf of the company.” — Susan Catalano, Co-Founder, Cognition Therapeutics
From Lab to Nasdaq
Cognition Therapeutics grew steadily through the following decade, hiring locally from Pittsburgh’s universities and colleges, from entry-level graduates up through senior PhDs. It ran early clinical trials in Australia to take advantage of tax credits there, then expanded testing to multiple sites across the US as the program matured. By 2021, the team had grown to about 20 full-time staff plus consultants.
That year, Cognition went public on Nasdaq under the ticker CGTX, raising roughly $40 million, a milestone for a company built on research funding rather than product sales. “You never see revenue in this space,” Catalano said of therapeutics development. “It’s an R&D model, you’re just doing tranches of financing until you’re acquired or go public.” Revenue, she explained, arrives once a drug is approved and on the market, or through an acquisition, a license, or the company’s own sale; the IPO simply gave Cognition a new set of investors to tap for the capital needed to keep testing its lead candidate.
Catalano stepped down from Cognition Therapeutics after the IPO, a transition she describes as natural once the company shifted its focus to running clinical trials rather than early-stage discovery. She went on to lead science as Chief Science Officer at two gene therapy companies, CODA Biotherapeutics andCapsida Biotherapeutics. Cognition Therapeutics remains publicly traded and continues to develop its lead candidate, Zervimesine, in Phase 2 studies for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies, with a Phase 3 trial for dementia with Lewy bodies psychosis planned for 2027.
Advice for Founders
Catalano now spends some of her time mentoring early-stage founders, as a member of Innovation Works’ inaugural Mentor Advisory Board and through LifeX and Carnegie Mellon University’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship and its VentureBridge program. Her advice for founders building therapeutics or diagnostics companies starts with expectations: the road is long and expensive.. “There are going to be setbacks, and resilience is going to be a key part of making progress,” she said.
She also points to flexibility. As artificial intelligence and regulatory practice shift the landscape, Catalano said founders need a lean-forward mindset, comfortable making decisions without complete information. “It’s certainly not a place for reserved personalities,” she said.
Catalano encourages founders to see what Pittsburgh’s life sciences ecosystem has built since Cognition’s early days, pointing to StartUP PGH, CMU Startup Week and the region’s growing base of resources, including AlphaLab Health‘s neuroscience track with Allegheny Health Network and ongoing developments at UPMC. “It’s a very exciting place that makes a lot of sense from an economic and talent perspective,” she said. “I would highly recommend it.”
Learn more about Alzheimer’s research in this book, Alzheimer’s Disease Drug Development, which includes a chapter by Susan Catalano.
