The Longitude Prize on ALS is awarding £2 million to 20 of the world’s most promising multidisciplinary teams of innovators using AI to find new drug targets for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) – the most common form of MND (motor neurone disease).
The Longitude Prize on ALS is a £7.5m global challenge prize designed to encourage AI-based approaches to drug discovery for the condition.
Following a global call to action in June 2025, almost 100 teams representing universities, technology companies, medical research organisations and AI specialists entered the prize.
The 20 selected entrants have now received “Discovery Awards” of £100,000 each, based on their potential to use AI to identify and validate drug targets. Identifying drug targets will help drive understanding of the disease and support future drug discovery.
Tris Dyson, managing director at Challenge Works, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2023, said: “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.
“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.”
The successful awardees include:
- King’s College London in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline and Bielefeld University in Germany
- Aperture Therapeutics in the US, in partnership with Harvard Medical School and Tufts University
- Paris Brain Institute in partnership with Simmunome in Canada and Servier in France
- ALS Therapy Development Institute in the US, in partnership with Google Cloud
- Translational Neurodegeneration, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Rostock/Greifswald in Germany, in partnership with Gladstone Institutes in the US
- University College London, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, the University of Edinburgh, the National University of Singapore and Stockholm University; and the University of Pennsylvania.
The 20 teams now have access to what is claimed to be the largest and most comprehensive ALS patient dataset of its kind, combining multiple types of biological information not previously available in one place.
This includes the genomic sequences of 9,000 ALS patients and epigenomics, transcriptomics and proteomics data for more than 2,000 cases.
Epigenomics looks at chemical changes that affect how genes work, transcriptomics studies gene activity, and proteomics examines proteins, the molecules that carry out many functions in the body.
During this first round of the prize, the teams will draw on the expertise within each team to identify the most promising drug targets with the help of AI.
In 2027, 10 of the teams will progress to a second stage, receiving a further £200,000 to build the evidence base for their proposed therapeutic targets through computer modelling and laboratory work. In 2028, five teams will then receive £500,000 to undertake validation of the highest-potential identified targets in the wet lab.
The winning team will be announced in early 2031 and will receive £1m for identifying and validating the target with the strongest evidence of therapeutic potential.
Tanya Curry, chief executive of the MND Association, said: “Our vision is a world free from MND and this can be achieved through funding leading researchers to chase down new treatments.
“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.”
