Scientists Are Searching For People With Superhuman Abilities. Can YouProve It For $10,000?

Scientists are now searching for people with superhuman abilities. Can you prove it?

Scientists have launched an international search for its innovation challenge project by UCB, a global pharmaceutical company, for people with superhuman abilities, who they can study in the hope they will give the key to new drug treatments and receive a reward of $10,000.

The researchers hope to track down people with rare phenotypes. Such as those who can heal very quickly like Hugh Jackman’s character in the film “Wolverine” or somehow protected from disease much like Will Smith's character in the movie “I Am Legend” or whose skin stretches a great deal.

The company hopes that by studying these people could eventually help them to find treatments, or even cures, for severe diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. They believe it could also help them find new treatments for diabetes, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and asthma.

Professor Dame Kay Davies, Director of the MRC Functional Genomics Unit at the University of Oxford stated that this is an innovative approach to developing new medicines which potentially holds much promise and traditionally, finding individuals and communities that possess medically interesting phenotypes has proved difficult.

UCB Pharma hopes to harness the power of the internet in order to create a global network allowing them to discover people who have unique characteristics with the innovation challenge.

“Our company support high quality biomedical research targeted at serious unmet needs and we believe that those who participate in this challenge could be helping people who are affected by disease. We are encouraging people to enter the challenge because without active participation we may miss the genetic key to solving some of the world’s most difficult to treat illnesses,” Alastair Kent said, Director of the Genetic Alliance UK.

The company is asking potential participants to describe their interesting or rare characteristic on an online form which is available until midnight on February 20, and the best submission will receive a reward of $10,000 as well as a bonus award of $1,000, which will be paid to applicants who the judges feel submitted an interesting or significant entry.

In order to be qualified for the reward, submissions must describe phenotypes that can be studied to give information helpful in the development of new disease prevention strategies. However, on this occasion, they will not essentially be studied, the researchers are testing the idea of finding research subjects in this way to see whether it is effective.

If they discover that they do get a selection of interesting and valid submissions, then they could use the approach in future when looking for people to study.

“We have a completely open mind about what phenotypes might be most appropriate to explore. For example, individuals or groups who exhibited exceptional wound healing after surgery or trauma might warrant further investigation. Equally, those who have consistently displayed exceptional resistance or immunity to infections, or who, after a robust clinical diagnosis, displayed unusually fast or spontaneous disease remission might be the basis for a winning submission,” Dr. Duncan McHale explained, Vice President of Global Exploratory Development.