Prize4Life Launches $1 Million Prize For Finding Novel Treatment Candidates For ALS

Main Category: Muscular Dystrophy / ALS
Article Date: 22 Oct 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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Prize4Life, a non-profit organization, today launched its latest prize, a one million dollar ($1M) award for finding a treatment candidate that reliably and significantly increases the lifespan in mouse models of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), commonly known in the US as Lou Gehrig's disease. This prize, called the "Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize," is open to all interested researchers worldwide with the goal of accelerating the discovery of treatments and cures for ALS.

ALS is a rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease that typically steals the life of patients within 2-5 years of diagnosis. It is caused by the degeneration of motor neurons, the nerve cells in the central nervous system that control voluntary muscle movement. It most commonly strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70, and affects men slightly more than women. ALS is the most common motor neuron disease worldwide, and as many as 30,000 Americans struggle with the disease at any given time. There is no known cure for ALS and only one FDA-approved treatment for the disease.

"An effective treatment for ALS is desperately needed, and the existing mouse model is the primary gateway to clinical trials. The identification of a treatment capable of meeting the high survival bar set forward in this prize should attract the attention of those with the resources necessary to move a potentially effective ALS therapy into the clinic," said Dr. Tom Maniatis, the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, who is a prominent ALS researcher and member of Prize4Life's Scientific Advisory Board. "The Kremer prize will only be awarded for a therapy that makes a major difference in the disease, the kinds of therapies that ALS patients really need."

With the launch of the ALS Treatment Prize, Prize4Life is hoping to increase the number of novel ALS treatments in the drug development pipeline. As a critical first step to expanding the pipeline of potential new therapies, the ALS treatment prize will encourage the testing of a wide variety of potential therapies in ALS mouse models, a critical scientific and regulatory hurdle for the development of new drugs. In addition to posting the million-dollar prize, Prize4Life has also pledged to spend up to $500,000 additional dollars for independent validation of therapies that meet the bar set by the treatment prize, which is a 25% extension of lifespan in two different animal models of ALS.

Prize4Life was the first disease-oriented organization to utilize the incentive prize model to address neurodegenerative disease -- specifically finding treatments and cures for ALS. "There are challenges to this model, to be sure," noted Dr. Maniatis, "but if Prize4Life succeeds, the payoff could be huge. This effort could have major implications not just for ALS patients, but for any group looking to bring new ideas to the table for solving a biomedical problem."

The ALS Treatment Prize will have a rolling deadline. If no winning solutions are submitted, the prize will be closed to further submissions in October 2010. Interested researchers can learn more about the prize and register to compete at http://www.prize4life.org.

About Prize4Life and the Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize

Prize4Life was founded by a group of Harvard Business School students when one of them, Avi Kremer, was diagnosed with ALS at the age of 29. The founders sought to attract new minds, media, and money to the battle against ALS to expand upon existing efforts and increase the resources available to researchers. Several years later, even as the disease takes its inexorable toll, Mr. Kremer continues to lead and drive the organization which has garnered a significant amount of attention for its pioneering model and has helped inject a newfound hope in ALS patients and their families. The funding for the latest prize was given by an anonymous donor whose only request was that this prize be named the "Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize" in honor of Prize4Life's founder and CEO. The Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize is the second major prize launched by this non-profit organization.

The organization's first prize, a $1 million award for the discovery of a clinically relevant biomarker, released in November 2006, has already attracted over 50 competing teams from around the world, including a number of researchers outside the field of ALS who have sought to apply novel solutions to the biomarker challenge. The deadline for submissions to this first prize challenge is November 6, 2008.

Prize4Life