Prize named for Israeli ALS patient offered for successful research into the neurological disease

Kremer is one of the founders of Prize4Life, which aims at attracting minds, media and money to the battle against ALS.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
kremer 224 (photo credit: Courtesy)
kremer 224
(photo credit: Courtesy)
A $1 million prize in honor of an Israeli victim of Lou Gehrig's disease has been offered by a group of Harvard Business School students to find a treatment for the neurological disorder, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). On Tuesday, Prize4Life announced the Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize, which is open to all interested researchers worldwide with the goal of accelerating the discovery of treatments and cures for ALS. The nonprofit US group is offering the award to scientists who can devise a treatment that reliably and significantly increases the life span in mouse models of the disease. Kremer, who was diagnosed a few years ago with ALS at the age of 29, when he was studying at Harvard Business School, is one of the founders of Prize4Life, which aims at attracting minds, media and money to the battle against ALS. Even as the disease takes its inexorable toll, Kremer continues to lead and drive the organization, which has commanded a significant amount of attention for its pioneering model and has helped give ALS patients and their families new hope. The funding for the prize was given by an anonymous donor, whose only request was that the award be named the "Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize" in honor of Prize4Life‚s founder and CEO. ALS is a rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease that typically wrecks the life of patients within two to five years of diagnosis. It is caused by the degeneration of motor neurons, the nerve cells that control voluntary muscle movement. It most commonly strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70, and affects men slightly more than women. ALS is the most common motor neuron disease worldwide, and as many as 30,000 Americans and a few hundred Israelis struggle with the disease at any given time. There is no known cure for ALS and only one FDA-approved treatment for the disease. "An effective treatment for ALS is desperately needed, and the existing mouse model is the primary gateway to clinical trials," said Prof. Tom Maniatis, a molecular and cellular biologist at Harvard University and a prominent ALS researcher who serves on Prize4Life's scientific advisory board. "The identification of a treatment capable of meeting the high survival bar set forward in this prize should attract the attention of those with the resources necessary to move a potentially effective ALS therapy into the clinic," he said. "The Kremer prize will only be awarded for a therapy that makes a major difference in the disease, the kinds of therapies that ALS patients really need." In addition to posting the million-dollar prize, Prize4Life has also pledged to spend up to an additional $500,000 for independent validation of therapies that meet the bar set by the treatment prize, which is a 25 percent extension of life span in two different animal models of ALS. Prize4Life was the first disease-oriented organization to utilize the incentive prize model to address neurodegenerative disease - specifically finding treatments and cures for ALS. "There are challenges to this model, to be sure," noted Maniatis, "but if Prize4Life succeeds, the payoff could be huge. "This effort could have major implications not just for ALS patients, but for any group looking to bring new ideas to the table for solving a biomedical problem."