The Longitude Prize on ALS is a £7.5m [~$10m USD] international programme that seeks to incentivise the use of AI-based approaches to transform therapeutic discovery for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of motor neurone disease (MND).
The five-year Prize will see global multidisciplinary teams compete in a three-phased programme to identify, prioritise and validate high-potential drug targets for ALS. To drive discovery, the Prize has brought together a range of ALS datasets, working with data holders worldwide, and participants will be provided with access to these data, funding, compute, technical expertise and a range of additional support and partnership opportunities.
through the use of cutting-edge AI (or provide new evidence for known but unpublished targets).
and provide access to these data to all prize participants, with compute power and data support.
across AI-focused biotech, computational biologists and ALS/neurodegenerative disease researchers.
and campaign for better use of patient data.
to the benefit of the scientific and patient community.
in the therapeutic potential of discoveries from the Prize.
The Longitude Prize on ALS will run for five years and will comprise three key stages: Discover, Prioritise and Validate.
Number of teams: 20
Development time: 9 months
Award per team: £100,000
The Prize will fund twenty interdisciplinary teams to identify novel therapeutic targets for ALS, or provide new evidence for known but unvalidated targets. During a 9-month development period, teams will use AI-based methods to analyse datasets provided by the Prize and/or their own data sources. To ensure robustness and reproducibility, teams will be expected to replicate their findings. This stage will be entirely computational and supported through access to high-quality datasets, technical training, and a secure cloud platform with dedicated compute credits provided.
Number of teams: 10
Development time: 12 months
Award per team: £200,000
The Prize will fund ten multidisciplinary teams of computational and wet lab scientists to apply mixed-method approaches that strengthen confidence in, and expand the evidence base for, the proposed therapeutic targets. This stage will involve both computational and wet lab analysis. Teams may continue to develop up to 10 targets submitted from Stage 1 and will further narrow this list based on emerging evidence.
Number of teams: 5
Development time: 24 months
Award per team: £500,000
The Prize will fund five teams to carry out comprehensive wet lab validation of the most promising therapeutic target(s). While teams may choose to validate more than one target, they must ensure sufficient resources and scientific rigour to conduct effective studies. This stage is predominantly lab-based and aims to generate high-confidence data that can move targets closer to clinical application.
Number of teams: 1
Award: £1,000,000
The Prize will award one Winner who has demonstrated exceptional progress in validating therapeutic target(s) with the highest potential impact on ALS treatment.
We are looking for the brightest minds to bring AI to the fight against ALS.
The Prize will award applicants from across medical research, biotechnology, computational biology and AI with bold ideas on how to harness the power of AI to identify and validate high-potential therapeutic targets for the discovery of transformative ALS therapeutics.
We are looking for:
AI experts
Computational biologists and bioinformaticians
Neurodegenerative disease researchers and ALS researchers
Biotechnology, techbio and pharmaceutical companies
Data scientists and engineers
Clinical experts and medical researchers.
If you're interested in taking part in the Prize, register your team now in order to gain access to the data, as well as a database of experts and specialists to collaborate with.
Simply create an account using the link below, complete your team profile and we will be in touch with more information.