Friday, October 31, 2008

Prize4Life puts another $1M on the line for ALS

By Catherine Williams, Special to Mass High Tech

Avichai “Avi” Kremer can’t speak or hold a fork. It’s difficult to hold up his head because his neck muscles are disappearing. Kremer suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Despite his physical limitations, Kremer is a force. He founded a nonprofit organization in Cambridge aimed at finding a cure for the disease by enticing researchers with two $1 million prizes.

“I don’t believe in waiting for someone to save me,” said Kremer in an e-mail. “I was taught to make a difference.”

Diagnosed in 2004, Kremer, 33, founded Prize4Life Inc. in 2006 with a group of fellow Harvard Business School students.

Last week, the organization announced its second $1 million prize. The prize — known as the Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize — rewards scientists who develop treatment candidates for ALS. The submission deadline is rolling through October 2010.

ALS is an aggressive disease. The life expectancy of an ALS patient averages two to five years from diagnosis, according to The ALS Association. ALS is caused by the degeneration of motor neurons, the nerve cells in the central nervous system that control voluntary muscle movement.

When asked why he started Prize4Life instead of focusing on his own health, Kremer replied, “If not me, who? Eight years into the 21st Century, doctors tell ALS patients what they told Lou Gehrig — that they can’t help and it’s an inevitable death sentence. I find it unacceptable.” Gehrig, a star with the New York Yankees, was diagnosed in 1939 and died in 1941.

An earlier prize awards $1 million for the identification of a biomarker that reduces the cost of clinical trials. The submission deadline is Nov. 6 of this year. There are more than 50 research teams from 18 countries — including Japan, India and Mexico — competing for the prize. Of those competing, 60 percent represent academia and 22 percent industry, according to Melanie Leitner, chief scientific officer at Prize4Life.

Kremer, who serves as CEO of Prize4Life, graduated from Harvard Business School in 2007 and travels to Boston from his home in Haifa, Israel, every few months. The organization raised money for both its day-to-day operations and for the two prizes through grassroots fundraising and by two individual anonymous donations worth $1 million each, said Leitner.

Harvard on the hunt
The Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center is also at work on ALS. The center launched an ALS-specific drug discovery program in June 2008. Two teams of researchers are already at work, said Patti Stoll, deputy director at the center. The center plans to pick eight more projects over the next two years. 

There is one FDA-approved treatment available, known as Riluzole. Approximately 5,600 people nationwide are diagnosed with ALS annually. It is estimated as many as 30,000 Americans may have the disease at any given time, according to The ALS Association. Kremer says the market for ALS treatments is “lucrative and the need is dire.”

Every few weeks Kremer loses another function like swallowing, breathing and sitting up straight. He can only pet his new puppy with his toes.

“Every night when I go to bed, I don’t know what I will be able to move in the morning,” said Kremer.

Catherine Williams is a freelance writer in Boston.