Longitude Prize on MND

A £20m global challenge prize to drive the development of multimodal therapies for Motor Neurone Disease

DELIVERED BY CHALLENGE WORKS World-leading experts in challenge prizes that unearth innovative solutions to urgent problems

Our prizes look to solve a wide range of problems From purifying water on the moon to reinventing the wheelchair, our prizes set audacious goals and incentivise the brightest minds to solve them. They reward success, drive public awareness and are impactful tools for advocacy, influencing policy and bringing about societal change.

The Longitude Prize is our most eminent Prize collection.

The original Prize, developed in 1714, transformed global trade and navigation. The current Longitude Prizes tackle some of the greatest issues of our time; antimicrobial resistance and dementia. The new Longitude Prize on MND will join this transformative portfolio.

Motor Neurone Disease is a devastating neurodegenerative condition affecting 3 in every 1,000 people There is currently no treatment to significantly slow the progression of MND. Once diagnosed, patients typically survive for only two to four years.

Research has accelerated in recent years, uncovering many mechanisms that contribute to the development of MND. It is now understood that MND is multifactorial, the disease involves different pathways and mechanisms in each patient.

The scientific community believes that one solution to treating such a complex disease could lie with drugs that can tackle multiple disease mechanisms at once. It’s an approach that has had huge success in cancer and HIV. Can combination and multimodal therapies be the answer to MND? To answer this question, The Longitude Prize will accelerate the development of multimodal and combination therapies.

The Prize seeks to accelerate traditional drug development timelines by harnessing innovative new approaches including; novel experimental medicine platforms, new ways to model the disease and new collaborative partnerships.

Tris Dyson

Founder, Challenge Works and MND patient

THE PRIZE DESIGN

A three-stage prize to accelerate the preclinical and clinical development of multimodal therapies. Each stage will run concurrently.

Breakth

Entrants Academics, biotechs, pharma – from MND, ND & other areas of drug development

3.

Incentivis access to br med

Pion

Incentivising clinic to rapidly test multimod

2.

A total of 5 prizes

Discov

Incentivising preclinical studies medicines with the potential to s

1.

A minimum of 10 awards

Global communic

£5m Breakthrough Prize Available to the team whose medicine slows or stops progression of MND by a year or more in a large-scale clinical trial

hrough

sing early reakthrough dicine

Prize to fund activities accelerating access to breakthrough medicines; such as early access and compassionate use programs

neer

cal studies aiming dal medicines in patients

Partnerships with experimental medicine and clinical screening experts

of £1 million each

very

aiming to validate multimodal slow or stop MND progression

s, each up to £500,000

cations campaign

Increased rigour through independent replication of preclinical results

THE LONGITUDE PRIZE ON MND The prize will

Incentivise testing of multimodal therapies MND is a complex multi-pathway disease, the Prize will incentivise the identification and testing of therapies that target multiple pathways and slow disease progression.

Provide a strengthened pipeline of drugs going to trial The Prize aims to build a pipeline of multi-modal medicines that will benefit new and existing clinical trial platforms.

Build international collaboration Bringing international researchers, biotech and pharmaceutical companies together to strengthen the global research community.

Attract new researchers to MND

Raise awareness of MND globally

Attract new funding to MND

Incentivising new researchers from other neurodegenerative diseases and adjacent fields into MND.

Delivering a campaign to raise awareness of MND, and for faster and more equitable access to high potential experimental treatments. The prize will be designed with and for those living with MND.

Bringing new funders and investors into the space by highlighting opportunities for effective treatments and de-risking investment through preclinical and early clinical screening.

JOIN US ON THIS JOURNEY Challenge Works are raising £20m to deliver this Prize.

We are currently developing key partnerships in the MND space to finalise the Prize design and implement the programme.

challengeworks.org/mnd info@challengeworks.org