New £7.5m prize launched to find AI treatments for ALS – UKTN

A new prize worth £7.5m has been launched to encourage the development of new treatments for ALS using AI technology.

The Longitude Prize on ALS, delivered by Challenge Works and principally funded by the MND Association, has invited medical researchers and biotech teams to present automated approaches to drug discovery to find new treatments for motor neurone disease, also known as MND.

Only limited treatments for the condition currently exist and are generally only able to slow the progression of the disease rather than treat it long-term. However Challenge Works claims that new advances in AI present the best opportunity yet to develop new medicines.

“ALS is astonishingly complex which is why it has been so difficult to develop treatments that truly fight this hideous disease. Tireless fundraising in the last decade has created a wealth of data on ALS that just didn’t exist before, and we are at a turning point,” said Challenge Works managing director and ALS patient Tris Dyson (pictured).

“Never before have we had the power to unlock the complexity of MND, and in particular ALS, and accelerate along the road to long-term treatments, and, I hope one day, a cure.

“The Longitude Prize on ALS makes this possible, convening the largest data set of ALS patient data of its kind ever made available and rewarding researchers to use AI to identify the most promising drug targets.”

The prize will initially reward 20 of the most promising entrants with £100,000, after which 10 teams will progress to the second stage, receiving a further £200,000, with the list then reduced to five teams receiving an additional £500,000. One winning team will then receive an additional £1m.

“Innovative approaches to drug discovery could be game changing in terms of how we understand ALS,” said Professor Ammar Al-Chalabi, director of the UK Motor Neuron Disease Research Institute.

“Using AI-led innovation to uncover specific molecules in the body linked to the disease that can be targeted with a drug is the first step to discovering effective treatments. The opportunity The Longitude Prize on ALS presents is huge.”

The Longitude Prize on ALS is also supported by Nesta, the Alan Davidson Foundation, My Name’5 Doddie Foundation, LifeArc, FightMND, the 10,000 Brains Project, Answer ALS and the Packard Center at Johns Hopkins.

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