This is not a corporate origin story. This is about family, loss, and the refusal to accept a world without a cure.
David Scott Lewis watched his mother disappear. Not all at once -- Alzheimer's doesn't work that way. It takes the small things first. The name of a grandchild. The recipe she'd made a thousand times. The route home from the grocery store she'd walked for decades.
Then it takes the big things. The recognition in her eyes when her son walked through the door. The ability to hold a conversation. The knowledge of who she was.
“My mother died from Alzheimer's. My sister Jenna was diagnosed 18 months ago. This is not abstract for me. This is the most personal fight of my life.”
— David Scott LewisAlzheimer's disease affects 55 million people worldwide. That number will triple by 2050. It is the most common form of dementia, the seventh leading cause of death globally, and one of the costliest diseases in existence. There is no cure. There are barely any treatments that do more than delay the inevitable by a few months.
For David, this was never going to be acceptable. Not after watching his mother. Not after learning about his sister Jenna.
In January 2026, a paper was published in Cell Reports Medicine that changed everything David thought he knew about Alzheimer's disease.
Researchers demonstrated that a compound called P7C3-A20 -- an NAD+ pathway activator -- didn't just slow Alzheimer's progression in mice. It reversed it. Amyloid plaques cleared. Tau tangles resolved. The blood-brain barrier repaired itself. Cognitive function returned.
“I read the paper three times that night. By morning, I knew what I had to do. Not someday. Now.”
— David Scott LewisThe results were extraordinary -- but they were in mice. The gap between mouse model and human therapy is vast. It typically takes 10-15 years and $2-3 billion to bring a drug to market. Most academic labs cannot afford the computational tools needed to even begin exploring the pathway.
Commercial platforms like Schrodinger cost $500,000 or more per year. Most universities, most labs in developing countries, most independent researchers simply don't have access.
David saw the gap. And he saw the bridge.
The Reversal Initiative was born from a simple conviction: the tools to fight Alzheimer's should not be locked behind paywalls.
David assembled a team of AI researchers, computational biologists, and open-source developers. Together with Enrique Zueco, they began building what would become a comprehensive computational drug discovery platform -- 37+ modules covering everything from virtual screening to molecular dynamics simulation to toxicology prediction.
The platform is designed to do for Alzheimer's research what Linux did for computing: give everyone access to the tools they need, regardless of budget.
“We're not building a company. We're building a bridge between a preclinical breakthrough and the therapies that families like mine are desperate for. Every tool we create is free. Every result we generate is published openly.”
— David Scott Lewis, FounderThe platform started with the NAD+ pathway -- the mechanism behind the Cell Reports Medicine breakthrough. But it was designed from the beginning to work with any Alzheimer's target. BACE1. GSK-3-beta. NMDA receptors. Neuroinflammation pathways. Any researcher, anywhere in the world, can use these tools for any target.
This is open science. This is the mission.
Every tool we create is open-source. Every result is shared with the global research community. No paywalls. No middlemen.
Because someone's mother is running out of time. Because someone's sister is counting on us. Because 55 million families deserve better than "there is no cure."
We're building open-source tools to fight Alzheimer's. Partner with us to accelerate the research.