In case you or someone you know is working on to find a treatment for ALS, there is $1 million for grabs.
Prize4Life announced its $1 million ALS/MND Treatment Prize on October 21, 2008.
Prize4Life is looking for novel treatments that have been shown to be effective in ALS mouse models, as this is a critical scientific and regulatory hurdle for the development of new drugs. The FDA requires that all new drugs being developed (for any use in humans) be thoroughly tested in animal models before they can be approved for clinical trials in people. In addition, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies use animal models to help them determine what potential therapeutics to invest time and resources in. Thus, Prize4Life has chosen to focus on this essential step in the drug development pathway for its second prize.
To date, no compound tested in ALS SOD mouse models under rigorous experimental conditions has demonstrated the ability to extend lifespan in these animals by even 10%. This lack of effect in animals has correlated with a lack of effect in patients and over the past 5 years the ALS community has had to withstand the disappointment of numerous failed clinical trials. Prize4Life has therefore decided to award one million USD for a new drug or treatment that reliably extends the lifespan of ALS mice by 25%. While this is certainly a high bar to set, this level of efficacy is currently the best hope for identifying a new ALS treatment and bringing it to the attention of the drug development community.
All intellectual property (IP) rights for this therapy will remain with the team(s) making the submission(s). We encourage any and all interested researchers from any sphere (industry, government, or academia) anywhere in the world to compete for this prize. To view specific prize criteria, click here. Please note that prize criteria was updated in October 2009.
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Hope to see some solution come out of this soon. Good Luck!
Where’s the October edition on how you are doing? Will you ask someone else to write for you in future? You blog readers, I’m sure, look forward to hear from you.
God bless you
October edition will come soon, just keep checking regularly! At present I’m using text-to-speech feature of Vista to do most of the typing, I hope this can go on for a long time. After that I will use EyeGaze technology to type.