LifeArc MND Primer Fund

Support for projects to accelerate solutions to advance earlier diagnosis of motor neuron disease.

The LifeArc MND Primer Fund supports the development of science and solutions that could help decrease the time it takes for people with motor neuron disease (MND) to reach a diagnosis. The fund forms part of LifeArc’s MND Translational Challenge, which aims to reduce the diagnostic delay experienced by people with MND – to enable patients receiving a positive diagnosis to access treatment sooner, and facilitate earlier recruiting to clinical trials, which in turn can increase the chances of trial success and developing new disease modifying treatments.

Funding is available to academic and industry organisations from anywhere in the world for projects which seek to develop solutions to accelerate MND diagnosis, with potential to be deployed from the point of visiting a GP/primary care physician to referral to a neurologist.

Innovative proposals are sought in the following areas:

• Point of care diagnostic biomarkers – ie a fluid, blood test or urine test that could be detected in the periphery (not a spinal tap or PET scans), that could highlight the possibility of MND.
• Digital markers of early symptoms – this could include linguistic analysis of symptoms which predict ALS, eg words that patients reported in patient notes or any other digital intervention.
• Algorithmic approaches – to detect changes in standard blood work that could be indicative of MND and/or neuronal damage.

Projects funded by the Primer Fund should strengthen evidence that the solution of interest is associated with disease and enhance the basis for its deployment between the point of visiting a GP/primary care physician to referral to a neurologist. As a minimum, projects are expected to demonstrate scientific rationale with data supporting hypothesis for solution development.

Projects are viewed as establishing a potential larger collaborative relationship with LifeArc with more substantial funding.