Applications to the Longitude Prize on ALS are open until 3 December 2025.
As part of our Funder Q&A series – spotlighting the leading charities and organisations that are supporting the Longitude Prize on ALS – we recently spoke to Paul Wright, Head of MND & Rare Dementias at LifeArc.
In his responses below, he details the organisation’s main ambitions, how it is working to make MND treatable and ultimately preventable, and why LifeArc was inspired to become involved in the Prize.
What is LifeArc’s main focus, and your core ambition?
We are a self-funded medical research organisation with a focus on rare diseases. Our core ambition is to ensure that scientific discoveries achieve their full potential and reach patients living with rare diseases faster. We do this through our scientific capabilities, translational expertise and strong partnerships across the research ecosystem.
Are there any particular challenges or opportunities that you’re focused on at the moment?
Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and rare dementia is one of LifeArc’s five translational challenges - alongside childhood cancer, chronic and rare respiratory disease, rare disease, and global health - and represents a key area of focus for our work.
Our goal is to make MND treatable and ultimately preventable. We are working to accelerate the development of new medicines and diagnostics, detect and diagnose the disease earlier, connect experts across MND research, and overcome the barriers that stop discoveries from reaching patients.
Crucially, we also want to listen and learn from people living with MND to ensure our work addresses what matters most to them.
What inspired you to fund the Longitude Prize on ALS?
Primarily, our motivation is around accelerating the discovery of new treatments for MND. The field has faced too many setbacks and we want to bring our expertise in translational science to support innovative and novel approaches that can shift the dial.
The Longitude Prize on ALS builds on our previous collaborations using AI to identify therapeutic targets for MND, and this work aligns with our expertise and our mission to advance ambitious science that can change lives.
Is there any advice that you would offer to innovators thinking about applying to the Prize?
Be bold. This is a moment to challenge conventional thinking and push boundaries. Collaboration between innovators will be vital. We hope to see people from outside the MND field bringing new perspectives and skills, alongside the wealth of expertise from established MND researchers. It’s a combination that has the potential to unlock major breakthroughs.
The launch of the Longitude Prize on ALS in June was an exciting moment for the international ALS network. What do you see as the next most exciting point in the Prize?
Every stage of the Prize will bring something exciting. At launch, it was inspiring to see so much global interest, and hear how the Prize can make a real difference.
Next, I am looking forward to seeing how teams come together and what novel approaches they bring to MND drug discovery. Having spent many years in the lab myself, working on MND, it will be incredibly rewarding to see those initial ideas transition from concept into the laboratory.
AI is already reshaping many areas and sectors, such as drug discovery. For those working at the intersection of AI and health, where do you see the biggest opportunities to accelerate impact?
AI’s ability to analyse vast and complex datasets will be transformative. A key challenge in our field, and one of the many reasons we have failed to deliver effective treatments, is that we still do not fully understand the underlying biology of the disease or the central nervous system. If we can leverage AI to analyse patient data, alongside data from model systems, this will enable us to hopefully understand the systems in a way we currently don’t. These insights, coupled with validating and replicating findings in the lab, will hopefully lead to new insights to disease and treatments.
I also think the ability to speed up the drug discovery process will be invaluable. Combining AI with chemistry expertise will allow us to hopefully develop medicines much faster.
ALS research has received growing support in recent years – with fundraising efforts such as the Ice Bucket Challenge placing a spotlight on the disease. What key changes or progress have you seen in this space over the past decade?
The Ice Bucket Challenge was a pivotal moment, bringing much-needed profile, awareness and funding to MND. Since then, we’ve seen the emergence of major international collaborations, many of which now underpin efforts like the Longitude Prize on ALS.
Our understanding of the genetic causes of MND has advanced, and we have more sophisticated systems for studying the disease - but there’s still a long way to go. What continues to drive the field forward are the incredible patient advocates and collaborative spirit that make MND research so uniquely determined and united.