5 win InnoCentive awards

InnoCentive Inc. announced that five people have been chosen to win awards in a competition to identify a biomarker for ALS/Lou Gehrig's Disease.

A Web-based community headquartered in Andover, InnoCentive helps corporate and nonprofit clients solve research-and-development problems by posting descriptions of these problems, called challenges, on a website visited by thousands of researchers, scientists, engineers, and mathematicians from around the world; those who solve a problem can qualify for financial awards.

Prize4Life, a nonprofit group seeking breakthroughs in ALS research, is working with InnoCentive to offer a total prize purse of $1 million for the successful identification of an ALS biomarker, InnoCentive said.

Five researchers will receive $15,000 each for their biomarker proposals for the first phase of the Prize4Life ALS Biomarker Challenge, InnoCentive said.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)