How Peter Wallach honors his brother (and co-founder)

My name is Peter and I am the Chief Financial Officer & Co-Founder at Synapticure. After my brother was diagnosed with ALS, our family founded Synapticure to help him and others.

Tragedy is a call to action, especially with family. Brian’s diagnosis of ALS wasn’t the first tragedy for our family, nor will it be the last. When our dad passed away, we were all pretty much kids; Brian was 21, Tom 17, and I was  14. Tragedy was thrust upon us, but in those circumstances, people can be beaten or get better.

This photo is from a few months after our father's passing - though you wouldn’t know it from the light Brian gave our family. He stepped in then to pretty much be a father figure to me in critical years of my life, from deciding on college to getting married. I helped found Synapticure with him because it was my turn to step up and help find a cure for him by creating a care offering that is built to treat every ALS patient, and in turn can use information from that treatment to subtype and improve outcomes and research.

Synapticure is set up to deliver that care for tens of thousands of patients with ALS today, and sister diseases, like PD and FTD, tomorrow. Every patient we see is offered the latest in diagnostics like genetic tests to fully understand their unique type of ALS, along with tools to monitor patients’  daily levels of  progression and treatment efficacy. Doing this at scale is the best way to get the data that we can use to help patients with ALS now.  

I’ve gotten to know too many patients over the last five years who, alone with their family and care team, fought for even the basics of care in ALS. It shouldn’t be this hard.

I’m here to honor those patients, so that the next generation can have authentic hope.

We’re in this together.

Peter