Global teams gain funding and data access to identify new drug targets for a complex neurodegenerative disease.
A £7.5 million ($10.2m) global challenge prize is placing a deliberate bet on artificial intelligence as a tool to reframe one of medicine’s most intractable problems. The Longitude Prize on ALS has awarded £2 million in “Discovery Awards” to 20 international teams, each tasked with identifying new drug targets for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – the most common form of motor neurone disease.
Drawn from nearly 100 applicants, the selected teams span more than 70 organizations across 12 countries; they bring together academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies and technology firms in a deliberately hybrid model. Alongside funding, each team gains access to a large, harmonized dataset combining genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and clinical information from thousands of ALS patients – a resource that reflects a broader shift towards data-centric biology.
ALS has always been a masterclass in biological complexity. It is progressive, fatal, and – most frustratingly – heterogeneous, a fact that explains why it continues to outmaneuver durable intervention. We are left with a clinical history defined by failure and a handful of treatments that offer only the most modest, fleeting benefits.
Longevity.Technology: There is something neatly defiant in the architecture of this prize; not simply its embrace of AI, but its recognition that the real bottleneck in neurodegeneration is upstream – target identification, biological relevance, mechanistic clarity. ALS has long resisted neat narratives; it is not one disease but many, converging on a similar and devastating phenotype – which is precisely why so many clinical trials have faltered. Into this complexity steps a different model: large-scale, harmonized human data; cross-disciplinary teams that blur the boundaries between academia, pharma and big tech; and a pipeline that insists ideas survive contact with biology, not just computation. Of course, it’s an appealing proposition, but a note of restraint feels appropriate; multi-omics integration is powerful, but not a panacea, and AI’s pattern-finding prowess does not guarantee causal insight. The more interesting question may be what happens if even partial success is achieved – if ALS begins to resolve into stratifiable subtypes with tractable targets – because that would signal something larger: a shift in how we approach the diseases of aging – less monolithic, more granular; less reactive, more predictive; and, perhaps, just a little more optimistic than the field has historically allowed itself to be.
A staged approach to discovery
The prize is structured in phases, reflecting the attrition inherent in drug discovery. Following this initial round, ten teams will progress in 2027 to further develop their findings, before a smaller group advances to experimental validation. The final award – £1 million – will be granted in 2031 to the team that demonstrates the strongest therapeutic potential.
Such staging is pragmatic. Identifying a credible drug target remains one of the most difficult steps in translational medicine; failure at this early stage often cascades through later development. By focusing attention here, the prize implicitly acknowledges where the field has struggled most.
Tris Dyson, Managing Director at Challenge Works and himself living with ALS, framed the initiative in personal and practical terms. “10 months on from launch, we are celebrating 20 highly collaborative and creative consortiums who have teamed up with a shared goal in mind – to find a treatment for ALS,” he said.
“I was confident that the time was right to launch the Longitude Prize on ALS, given huge advances in AI. However, I didn’t quite realise just how impressive a line-up of researchers and innovators it would attract. Beating ALS requires the boldest and brightest innovators – and that’s what we have found.”
Data at scale, biology in detail
At the center of the effort sits data – not simply in volume, but in composition. Participating teams will work with whole genome sequences from thousands of patients, layered with epigenomic, transcriptomic and proteomic profiles, as well as clinical metadata. The ambition is to move beyond isolated signals towards integrated biological maps – a shift that aligns with broader trends in systems biology.
AI, in this context, functions less as a standalone solution and more as a means of navigating complexity. Pattern recognition across high-dimensional datasets may reveal relationships that are otherwise opaque; yet those patterns must ultimately be anchored in experimental validation.
The participating teams reflect this duality. Some focus on neuronal resilience, others on lipid metabolism or RNA splicing; still others aim to map disease subtypes or construct knowledge graphs that capture gene–gene interactions. Diverse approaches. Shared goal.
Patients at the center
For Dr Yentli Soto Albrecht, the search for a target isn’t just a career path; it’s a necessity. Carrying a mutation linked to ALS herself, she describes a drive that is as much about survival as it is about science.
“I know that, if nothing changes, I will become one of the 1 in 300 people who will develop ALS in their lifetime,” she said. “Having watched what this disease took from my father, I not only grieved his loss but also faced the reality of what lay ahead for me. My world crumbled. I built another, around my MD-PhD and the work it made possible.
“I am committed to finding a treatment for ALS before the disease takes me too, a door the Longitude Prize on ALS has opened. There’s a real chance that, across these 20 teams, we discover the perfect drug target – and what an honour it is to play a part in this fight.”
That interplay between lived experience and scientific inquiry is increasingly visible across neurodegeneration research; it lends urgency, but also direction.
Funding models in transition
The prize is anchored by the Motor Neurone Disease Association, but its real weight comes from a broader coalition of philanthropic and research interests. It is a sign of the times: a move away from isolated silos toward a messier, more effective convergence of public, private, and nonprofit capital.
Tanya Curry, Chief Executive of the MND Association, emphasized both ambition and realism. “Our vision is a world free from MND and this can be achieved through funding leading researchers to chase down new treatments,” she said. “These 20 teams of innovators and their work can provide more understanding of this condition and potentially, one day, a cure. MND is a devastating disease, but every step forward in research brings hope. We are delighted to support the work that lies ahead in our role as principal funder.”
A different kind of convergence
Across the prize, a pattern emerges – not only in the data being analyzed, but in the way research itself is being organized. Boundaries soften; disciplines overlap; infrastructure becomes as important as insight.
What happens next will take time. It always does. Yet in the careful alignment of data, computation and biology, there is at least the outline of a different trajectory – one that may, incrementally, make sense of a disease that has long resisted it.
Find out more about the 20 Discovery teams – CLICK HERE.
