About ALS
What is ALS?
ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease with an average life expectancy post-diagnosis of just two to four years. It is the most common form of motor neurone disease (MND), in which messages from the motor neurones gradually stop reaching the muscles. This leads the muscles to weaken, stiffen and waste, which can affect how individuals walk, talk, eat, drink and breathe. Some people also get changes to their thinking and behaviour, but the disease affects everyone differently.
Not all symptoms will affect everyone, or in the same order. Symptoms also progress at varying speeds, which makes the course of the disease difficult to predict. There is no cure.
Although often described as a rare disease, incidence is not uncommon – there is a 1 in 300 chance that a person develops ALS in their lifetime. For most patients, treatment is currently limited to one drug, Riluzole, which extends life by a matter of months.
Why ALS and why AI?
In recent years, there have been significant advances in understanding the biology of ALS, including the discovery of new biomarkers and treatment pathways. Yet for the vast majority of those diagnosed, ALS remains an extremely life-limiting disease. Progress towards a treatment is slow – the push for new treatments must continue at pace.
Recent breakthroughs have shown promise but the drug development process takes a long time (12-15 years), is expensive, and pharmaceutical companies are hesitant to invest as there are still very few high potential validated drug targets.
AI has the potential to materially alter the economics of innovation for ALS, by finding and validating high potential drug targets at speed, reducing programme risk and attracting investment from industry.
As the global ALS research portfolio has grown, more and more datasets have been created with a plethora of different data types. Many of these datasets remain out of reach to commercial entities, particularly in Europe, but analysis of such data may hold the key to truly understanding the disease and identifying promising new treatments.
Significant data volumes are critical to maximise the potential for AI-driven target discovery in ALS. In bringing global ALS patient data together in one place, the Longitude Prize on ALS presents a unique and powerful opportunity to discover and validate new drug targets in this particularly challenging disease.