£7.5 million Longitude Prize on ALS launches

Korea Herald

3 days ago

LONDON, June 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Longitude Prize on ALS, a £7.5 million global challenge prize, has launched to incentivise and reward cutting edge AI-based approaches to transform drug discovery for the treatment of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), the most common form of MND (motor neurone disease).
ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that damages the nerves in the brain and spinal cord, leading to severe muscle degeneration. There is a 1 in 300 chance that a person will develop MND – around 90% of cases will be ALS.
Although some very limited treatments exist to slow the progression of ALS for a short time, its complexity means there are no long-term treatments and no cure. For the first time, however, AI advances mean innovators have the opportunity to outpace the disease.
Tris Dyson, Managing Director, Challenge Works, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2023 said:
"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.
"In the last year, Tofersen, the first drug treatment to show real promise for people with the very rare inherited form of MND (affecting around 2% of patients), shows that the disease is no longer a black box that we cannot penetrate. We are now on the right path for treatments for all MND patients – including those of us living with ALS. The real game changer though is the rapid advancement of AI. It means we can turn the path into a superhighway.
"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 is principally funded by the Motor Neurone Disease Association and designed and delivered by Challenge Works, supported by Nesta. Additional funders include 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.
Seeking innovators from across medical research, biotech, techbio, pharmaceuticals and AI, the Prize will initially reward the 20 most promising entrants with £100,000 each in early 2026. Teams will be judged on the potential for their approach to identify and validate drug targets driving understanding of the disease and supporting onward translation into drug discovery.
The entry window closes on 3 December 2025. The 20 successful entrants will be named in the first half of 2026.
Lucy Hawking, journalist and daughter of the MND Association's late Patron, Prof. Stephen Hawking said:
"The Longitude Prize on ALS is an important step towards increasing our understanding of motor neurone disease, and specifically ALS. I hope the Longitude Prize will encourage the use of AI by researchers and scientists to gain new insights into this devastating condition and advance the search for treatments and a cure. For people living with the disease, their families, friends and carers worldwide, this would bring so much relief and joy. My father lived with MND for over 50 years, the longest known survivor with this condition and his great wish was that one day, a cure would be found. I'm proud to support the Longitude Prize and wish all entrants the very best."
Tanya Curry, Chief Executive, the Motor Neurone Disease Association said:
"Empowering some of the brightest minds across science and technology to come together, the Longitude Prize on ALS will initiate transformative change for people living with motor neurone disease. We are investing as a principal funder as enabling such collaborations, as well as the level of unprecedented data we're working to unlock, marks the start of a significant milestone for drug discovery, the MND Association and wider MND community in how we understand and consequently tackle the disease."
Successful applicants will gain access to the largest collection of ALS patient data of its kind via DNANexus, hosted on Amazon Web Services, provided in partnership with Project MinE, Answer ALS, New York Genome Center (NYGC), ALS Compute and the ALS Therapy Development Institute.
Ten teams will progress to a second stage, receiving £200,000 in 2027 to build the evidence base for their proposed therapeutic targets. In 2028, five teams will then receive £500,000 to undertake validation of the highest potential identified targets. The £1 million grand prize will be awarded in 2031.