MSIV Invests in Novato’s Lighthouse Pharmaceuticals

Q&A with Co-Founder & CEO Casey Lynch

Monday, June 15, 2026 from Novato, CA

‍In 2021, Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures launched the North Bay’s first regional venture capital fund and began deploying capital into Marin + Sonoma’s most promising startup companies.

Today, we are excited to share details around our investment in Lighthouse Pharmaceuticals, a Novato-based clinical-stage biotech company developing novel small-molecule therapies for neurodegenerative and inflammatory diseases.

Lighthouse’s lead clinical program focuses on the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Lighthouse is currently conducting the SPRING Clinical Trial, a Phase 2 study evaluating their LHP588 molecule in patients with Alzheimer’s disease who also test positive for the bacteria Porphyromonas gingivalis (P. gingivalis), a pathogen most commonly associated with periodontal disease. SPRING is actively recruiting new participants across the U.S.

Why We Invested

‍Alzheimer’s is a disease that has negatively impacted nearly every American family. The past few decades have seen countless clinical trials conducted, all with hopes of developing effective drugs to keep this awful disease from progressing, but with very limited success. The bulk of this clinical work has focused on the amyloid and tau hypotheses, which highlight the abnormal build-up of two distinct proteins in and around brain cells.

For over a decade, the team behind Lighthouse has focused their research and clinical work around P. gingivalis, a keystone bacteria in the development of gum disease which has also been found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. This alternative theory has grown in acceptance amongst Alzheimer’s experts in recent years, with P. gingivalis increasingly implicated in Alzheimer’s pathogenesis and progression.

Lighthouse Co-Founder & CEO Casey Lynch and team previously conducted Phase 2/3 trials at their previous company, Cortexyme. They are building on the knowledge gained as they conduct the SPRING trial, which aims to develop an oral therapeutic for P. gingivalis positive Alzheimer’s patients. The promise of Lighthouse’s effort was recently recognized by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). After an exhaustive peer review, NIA finalized the award of a $49.2 million grant to Lighthouse to support the SPRING trial.

MSIV invested as part of Lighthouse’s recent $12 million Series A financing, led by Double Point Ventures. Lighthouse is headquartered at Novato’s Buck Institute for Research on Aging, one of the world’s leading research institutions on longevity and geriatrics.

The North Bay has a rich history of biotech innovation, from BioMarin to Ultragenyx to Sonoma Pharmaceuticals, and we’re excited for Lighthouse to help write this next chapter in local drug development and therapeutics.

MSIV Founder & Managing Partner Zachary Kushel sat down with Lighthouse Co-Founder & CEO Casey Lynch to discuss her founder journey and Lighthouse’s efforts to develop an impactful Alzheimer’s therapeutic.

ZK: Casey, where did the inspiration come from for you to launch Lighthouse?

CL: My background is in Alzheimer’s research, and I’ve always been fascinated by the puzzle of Alzheimer’s disease and how pieces of the pathology fit together. There’s been a single-minded focus in the field on two proteins, beta-amyloid and tau, but the research has not turned into great therapeutics, so we know we’re missing something.

Lighthouse CEO Casey Lynch

In 2013, I was introduced to Lighthouse co-founder Stephen Dominy, who lives in Novato and was a UCSF professor with expertise in HIV dementia. He had found a pathogen in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients, P. gingivalis, which is an intracellular bacteria known to be involved in periodontal disease.  He was looking for someone on the business side to help him turn this discovery into a company. I was intrigued because there are a lot of puzzle pieces pointing to a role of infection in Alzheimer’s.

We teamed up and ran some additional experiments and convinced ourselves there was more here than just correlation. This led to the founding of our first company, Cortexyme, which then led to the launch of Lighthouse in 2022.

ZK: How is Lighthouse’s approach to developing an Alzheimer’s therapeutic different than what’s been tried by others in the field?

CL: We’re intentionally moving upstream. So much of the Alzheimer's focus has been on the plaques and tangles in the brain, but what’s triggering those plaques and tangles? From our review of the literature and our own proprietary research, we believe these parts of the pathology along with inflammation are a response to the disease rather than the initial cause.

Using an analogy, when you get the flu, your white blood cells go up, but that doesn’t mean the white blood cells are the problem. You want to find the pathogen and treat the pathogen, not the downstream effects of it, and that’s what our work at Lighthouse focuses on.

Lighthouse Co-Founder and Novato native Stephen Dominy speaks to an attendee at MSIV’s recent North Bay NEXT gathering

ZK: What is your vision for an eventual drug from a product standpoint? How would it ideally work to help treat Alzheimer’s?

CL: Our entire field is moving toward precision medicine. Our goal is to identify people who will respond to our treatment with a simple saliva test. We envision a world where you can spit into a tube at home, send it into a lab, and they can tell you if you are positive for P. gingivalis. We estimate it’s about 40% of patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s, and we aim to treat those people with an oral, once-a-day pill, so this older patient population can avoid the IV infusions and MRIs that are so common with other treatments. There may also be overlapping therapeutics that combat other areas of the disease, so patients can stem neurodegeneration on multiple fronts.

ZK: This is your and the team’s second company in this space – what are the key lessons learned from Cortexyme that you’re applying to the building of Lighthouse?

CL: Drug development takes persistence and resilience. The first drug you invent, the first trial you do, is most likely not going to be successful. This is a process of iteration and learning, and that’s what we did in building our previous company. We designed a study to help give us answers to questions like how much drug do we need to reduce the bacterial load, how do we diagnose the patient population, and how long does the study need to be.

These learnings must happen empirically – AI is not able to do these things yet. Our team has very experienced drug developers, and we are continuing this effort now via Lighthouse to address this unmet need which is such a source of suffering for people and their families. Our SPRING trial now counts 40 sites around the U.S., with most of them already ramped up and enrolling patients. Our closest site to the North Bay is in Oakland at a UCSF-affiliated clinic, and we plan to recruit patients over the next 12-18 months who will undergo one year of treatment.

ZK: Can you introduce yourself to the community as their North Bay neighbor? What excites you about the potential of the growing Marin + Sonoma startup community and collaborating with MSIV?

CEO Casey Lynch with her Sonoma-based family on a recent trip to Ireland

CL: I’m a Bay Area native and was living in San Francisco when we started spending time in the North Bay to get out of the fog and enjoy the weather, hiking, and biking up this way. A few years ago, my family and I moved full-time to Sonoma. I recently spoke at MSIV’s North Bay NEXT gathering and was inspired to meet so many local entrepreneurs. It’s so important to feed off of each other’s energy and to share lessons with one another, and I’m a big believer in MSIV’s vision for this community’s future.

We’ve intentionally headquartered at the Buck Institute as there is so much research happening there, right here in the North Bay, that is relevant to us. I’m also passionate about supporting other female entrepreneurs and recently joined the investment committee of Empower Her alongside leading North Bay women in business. I’m helping assess new healthcare ventures and am excited to pay it forward to boost this next generation of founders.