Prize4Life was founded in 2006 by Avichai "Avi" Kremer, and two of his Harvard Business School classmates, with the sole purpose of finding a cure for ALS. Avi was diagnosed in 2004 at the age of 29 during his first semester at HBS. He and his friends decided to pilot an innovative new way to accelerate ALS research.
Prize4Life is a results-oriented nonprofit founded to accelerate ALS research by offering substantial prizes to scientists who solve the most critical scientific problems preventing the discovery of an effective ALS 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 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?
In 2010, the Scientific Advisory Board of Prize4Life unanimously voted to award the $1 Million ALS Biomarker Prize to Dr. Seward Rutkove of Harvard University and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for his development of electrical impedance myography (EIM) for ALS. The discovery of this biomarker, a novel tool to track the progression of ALS, is a key first step in finding a treatment for this disease. 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.
