Prize4Life was founded in 2005 and officially incorporated in 2006 by a group of Harvard Business School students when one of them was diagnosed with ALS.  Avichai Kremer was 29 years old when he was diagnosed with the disease in 2004.  After his diagnosis, Avi and his friends and colleagues decided to pilot an innovative new way to accelerate ALS research. 

Prize4Life is a results-oriented nonprofit founded to accelerate ALS/MND research by offering substantial prizes to scientists who solve the most critical scientific problems preventing the discovery of an effective ALS/MND treatment.  The Prize4Life concept is inspired by other prize awards for stimulating research, such as the X-Prize for commercial space travel and DNA-decoding, the U.S. government's H-Prize for hydrogen renewable energy, and Eli Lilly's venture, InnoCentive, which outsources difficult R&D problems to a distributed network of scientists using prizes.  Prize4Life aims to supplement and complement existing resources by attracting new minds, money, and media to the fight against ALS.

Why launch prizes for ALS/MND research?

• Prizes will act as a beacon for all of ALS/MND research - attracting attention to some of the ALS problems most critical to discovering an effective treatment.
• Prizes will help build a bridge between academia and industry, allowing the right academic ideas to be taken outside of the laboratory and commercialized for ALS/MND patients.
• Prizes will help remove the largest impediments to industry's involvement in ALS/MND.

What makes Prize4Life distinctive?

• Prize4Life only pays for results - the results that ALS/MND patients desperately need.
• Prize4Life brings together existing ALS non-profits, academia, and industry - all working toward an ALS/MND treatment.

What will we offer prizes for?

Currently, Prize4Life is offering a $1 million prize for a biomarker/diagnostic tool: a test or exam that will allow us to measure how good a potential ALS/MND treatment is much more precisely than just measuring patient survival.  The deadline for submissions to this prize challenge is November 6, 2008.  Learn more about the Biomarker Prize.

Prize4Life is also offering a $1 million prize for the discovery of a treatment candidate that reliably and significantly extends the lifespan in mouse models of ALS.  Learn more about the ALS Treatment Prize.