A few years back, molecular geneticist Tom Maniatis was approached by a Harvard Business School student with a heart-wrenching story. The student, Avichai Kremer, then 29, had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Kremer had an unusual idea: He wanted to advance ALS research by offering million-dollar prizes to scientists who made meaningful contributions to research into the disease.
Maniatis was both skeptical and intrigued. He had lost his sister to ALS, and was the longtime chair of the research and drug-development committees for the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association. “The prize model had never been tried in life sciences,” says Maniatis, who is now a professor and chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (and one of our Xconomists). “At the time Avi entered the scene, the ALS community was pretty small. And the drug companies did not see it as a profitable pursuit.
As it turns out, Maniatis says, ALS was a perfect model for a prize-based research approach. In 2006, Kremer’s idea became Prize4Life, a Cambridge, MA-based nonprofit that is now one of the most influential forces in ALS research. In addition to offering a $1 million research prize each year—-the latest of which will be announced at a fundraising gala in New York on June 6—Prize4Life has spearheaded several programs designed to mobilize and energize scientists working in ALS. Kremer and a handful of his HBS classmates are running the entire endeavor, says Maniatis, who is a member of Prize4Life’s scientific advisory board. “They had such an affection and respect for Avi that many of them put off jobs to stay in Cambridge and work for this nonprofit,” he says.
Kremer and his classmates spent more than 1,000 hours talking to experts from the drug industry, academia, and nonprofits, before officially launching Prize4Life’s model. “What inspired me was the success of the Ansari X-Prize,” Kremer says in an e-mail, referring to the California organization that provides incentives to researchers in education, energy, the environment, life sciences, and exploration. “It proved to me that a prize can correct a market failure.” In Prize4Life’s case, he explains, that market failure is the lack of capital “to focus innovation coming from academia and small biotechs on ALS,” he says.
This year’s award will mark the third effort by Prize4Life to support ALS scientists with $1 million in research funding. In 2010, 33 teams of scientists—about half of whom came from academia and the other half from pharma companies—competed for the organization’s first $1 million award by proposing treatment protocols meant to extend the lives of mice with ALS by 25 percent. Ultimately, none of the teams met the goals set out by Prize4Life, and the $1 million prize went unclaimed, though several of the applicants are continuing their research with the organization’s support. (Prize4Life also sponsors a number of smaller research grants.)
Last year, Prize4Life awarded $1 million to Seward Rutkove, co-founder of Woburn, MA-based Convergence Medical Devices, for his work developing a biomarker that can measure the progression of ALS in patients. The tool is designed to make clinical trials of potential new drugs more efficient.
This year’s major prize will be a revival of the inaugural award’s goal—the promise of $1 million for research that demonstrates 25 percent survival in ALS mice. “In the previous round, no one was able to achieve that, but there are so many
