# Asa Abeliovich

> Asa Abeliovich is a physician-scientist turned serial biotech founder who spent two decades at the lab bench at Columbia before deciding the only way to get his ideas into patients was to start companies. He co-founded Alector, founded and sold Prevail Therapeutics to Eli Lilly for about $1 billion, and now runs Leal Therapeutics, a Worcester startup chasing a contrarian idea: that fixing the brain's broken metabolism can treat everything from schizophrenia to ALS to Alzheimer's. Leal spent over two years in stealth before surfacing with a clinical-stage pipeline and roughly $114 million raised.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at Leal Therapeutics
- **Organizations:** Leal Therapeutics, Prevail Therapeutics, Alector, Columbia University, Taub Institute for Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** BS, life sciences and humanities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MD, Harvard Medical School
- **Known for:** Founded Prevail Therapeutics and sold it to Eli Lilly for up to approximately $1.04 billion, Co-founded Alector, which became a publicly traded neuro-immunology company, Earned tenure as a professor of neurology and cell biology at Columbia University

## Career timeline

- **2000s** — Tenured Associate Professor of Pathology, Cell Biology and Neurology at Columbia University; member of the Taub Institute; attending neurologist at NewYork-Presbyterian and the New York Psychiatric Institute
- **2013** — Co-founds Alector, a neuro-immunology antibody company, and later serves as consulting Chief Innovation Officer
- **2017** — Founds Prevail Therapeutics, an AAV gene therapy company for neurodegeneration, with the Silverstein Foundation and OrbiMed
- **2020** — Prevail goes public; Eli Lilly agrees to acquire it for up to ~$1.04 billion
- **2021** — Eli Lilly completes the Prevail acquisition
- **2022** — Founds Leal Therapeutics in Worcester, MA; raises a $39 million seed round and operates in stealth
- **2024** — Leal emerges from stealth targeting schizophrenia (LTX-001) and ALS (LTX-002)
- **2025** — Leal announces a $30 million Series A led by SV Health Investors' Dementia Discovery Fund; named a Crain's New York Notable Leader in Health Care Technology

## Achievements

- Founded Prevail Therapeutics and sold it to Eli Lilly for up to approximately $1.04 billion
- Co-founded Alector, which became a publicly traded neuro-immunology company
- Earned tenure as a professor of neurology and cell biology at Columbia University
- Published influential research on Parkinson's disease genetics, including a 2016 Nature paper on trafficking defects bridging pathology and genetics
- Built Leal Therapeutics from stealth into a clinical-stage company with roughly $114 million raised
- Named a Crain's New York Business Notable Leader in Health Care Technology, 2025

## Latest updates

- **2025-08** — Leal Therapeutics announced a $30 million Series A led by SV Health Investors' Dementia Discovery Fund to advance LTX-001 in schizophrenia and LTX-002 toward ALS clinical data.
- **2025** — Abeliovich named a Crain's New York Business Notable Leader in Health Care Technology.

## Links

- Website: https://lealtx.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/asa-abeliovich-59735a5
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z35X-5dDw0

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/asa-abeliovich
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-04