American Life Science Pharmaceuticals (ALSP) is a small business on a big mission – to develop the drugs needed for 21st century, those that effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury. Though funding primarily from Small Business Innovative Research Grants (SBIR) from the National Institutes of Health, the Company assembled a team of world-class academics, scientists, physicians, biotech executives, regulatory affairs specialists, and lawyers dedicated to developing a cure for these currently untreatable diseases. Using a therapeutic target, an enzyme called cathepsin B, discovered in an academic laboratory to be a key player in causing neurodegeneration, the Company has developed compounds, which inhibit that enzyme, and is only group we are aware of doing so for treating those diseases. Thus, the academic-small business collaboration is resulting in a new “shot on goal” for treating Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury that otherwise would not have been developed. Testament to the scientific credibility of the approach is the fact that it has been shown efficacious in animal models in peer-reviewed scientific publications and that leading university clinical researchers, such as those at the Alzheimer’s Disease Co-operative Study, which is the National Institute of Aging’s major Alzheimer’s disease clinical research program, and the traumatic brain injury neurosurgical group at the University of California, San Diego, are eager to conduct clinical trials on Company’s compounds that effect this pathway. Those trials will soon be possible because the Company’s leads are ready for advancement to FDA Investigative New Drug clearance and are likely to achieve that clearance because they are proprietary derivatives of a compound, which has previously been shown safe to use in man. The drug development market place is rapidly changing with many large pharmaceutical companies going to virtual research model and filling their pipeline through partnering with small businesses having innovative therapeutic approaches, which will often be based on academic discoveries. Thus, ALSP sees itself in such a partnership and thus is also helping to develop this new academic-small business-large pharmaceutical company business model of drug development that promises to be the new path forward for developing the therapeutics patients need. As such, the Company’s products as well as the means used to create its products are at the cutting edge of innovation and represent some of the best efforts of the SBIR program.