Nesta: Longitude Prize
Overview
The specific challenge for a Longitude Prize is determined based on the critical needs and priorities of society. The prize offers substantial financial and non-financial rewards to successful teams or individuals across their journey and offers one grand prize and support to a team who can develop a groundbreaking solution that meets the defined criteria.
Upcoming Prizes
They are currently designing a global Challenge Prize on ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). ALS is a devastating condition with no cure, affecting 1 in 300 of us. They believe a Challenge Prize can drive developments in ALS treatment and raise awareness of this life-limiting disease.
Longitude Prize on ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)
The Longitude Prize on ALS is a global initiative to incentivise the use of AI to transform drug discovery for the treatment of ALS (also known as MND or motor neuron disease), launching in 2025.
The Prize will engage disease experts and data scientists worldwide to identify and validate drug targets and pathways relevant to disease progression, driving understanding of the disease and supporting onward translation into drug discovery.
The Prize is convening global data partners to bring a unique data offer to prize participants, giving access to data at an unprecedented scale.
The Prize will raise awareness of ALS as a disease ready for and in need of solutions.
Are you:
- An ALS researcher with an interest in drug discovery?
- A computational biologist working in neurodegeneration?
- A scientist in a techbio with an interesting AI model?
Past competitions
The Longitude Prize on Dementia
September 2022– September 2026
£4.42 million prize pot
The Longitude Prize on Dementia will be awarded to the creator of a breakthrough technology that learns from a person living with dementia, adapting and compensating for their condition as it progresses, and enabling them to continue living independently for longer. They announced the five finalist teams in October 2024, via BBC One’s The One Show.
The Longitude Prize on AMR
May 2014 – September 2022
£8 million prize pot
They are proud to announce that the £8 million Longitude Prize on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) has been awarded to Sysmex Astrego for the PA-100 AST System. The game-changing solution is a novel point-of-care diagnostic test that rapidly and accurately identifies the presence of a bacterial infection and the right antibiotic to prescribe.