Prize4Life - History

History

In the fall of 2004, 29-year-old Avichai “Avi” Kremer, a first-semester MBA student at Harvard Business School, was diagnosed with ALS. After learning there was no cure for the disease, Kremer and his friends set out to gain a better understanding of the ALS research landscape and to determine what they could do to help move the field forward more quickly.

In May 2006, Prize4Life, along with the, organized a conference with a number of top academic ALS researchers and high-level executives from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Conference participants were asked to consider the major obstacles currently preventing industry from focusing on translating the exciting ideas coming out of academia into the creation of new drugs for ALS. Conference attendees told us that the greatest obstacle by far was the lack of three vital “missing pieces”:

1. A biomarker (an inexpensive and simple way to measure disease progression in humans)
2. A predictive mouse model
3. An understanding of the underlying cause(s) and mechanism of the disease

Kremer and his friends decided to focus their attention on these missing pieces by following the example set by high-profile ventures such as the X-Prize. They worked with scientists to develop highly specific criteria for a prize that would reward the discovery of a clinically relevant ALS biomarker. The prize was launched with the help of InnoCentive, a company that has created a Web-based community of “seekers” who pose difficult R&D questions and “solvers,” who come from all over the world and a wide variety of backgrounds to provide solutions to these problems. As Prize4Life has grown and matured, the organization continues to administer prizes while also working to provide other informational and infrastructural resources that the ALS research community needs.