Molecular biologist Kristina Trujillo is determined to help physicians identify and treat Alzheimer’s disease before the onset of debilitating cognitive decline.

Trujillo, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from New Mexico State University, is CEO of Albuquerque-based T-Neuro Pharma. With help from the New Mexico Lab-Embedded Entrepreneur Program (LEEP), her company is developing a simple blood test to determine the presence of Alzheimer’s disease and a treatment to prevent its development and stop its progress.

She is one of three technology entrepreneurs in New Mexico LEEP’s first two-year fellowship cohort, which started early this year. The program embeds “deep tech” entrepreneurs—people developing solutions to existential problems like climate change and disease—at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where they work alongside scientists and mentors to advance, test and validate their innovations on a path to making them marketable products.