A key ambition for the Novo Nordisk Foundation is to enable people to live healthier and better lives. Since the Foundation was established, we have been funding and advancing research that increases our knowledge of human health and disease, and which has the potential to solve health challenges and contributes to the development of healthcare. Thus, the area is central to the Foundation’s heritage and identity.

We support a broad range of research activities within nearly all fields of biomedicine and health sciences. A large part of our funding is awarded in open competition to researchers who apply for grants for their own original project ideas. This funding is awarded mainly within four broadly defined research areas: 1) bioscience and basic biomedicine; 2) clinical and translational research; 3) endocrinology and metabolism; and 4) nursing research.

In addition to this, we support and co-develop major initiatives such as research centres and research infrastructures, e.g. the National Genome Center and the NNF Center for Basic Metabolic Research.

In the years to come, the Foundation will continue its current activities in biomedicine and the health sciences and expand within the following strategic focus areas:

• Breadth in biomedical research: Developing grant programmes that support excellent research broadly through a grant portfolio that promotes diversity, both in regard to the research areas and the researchers being offered support.
• Health-related data science: Supporting data science and artificial intelligence to help develop new and better diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic procedures and make more efficient use of resources in the care sector, including precision medicine, machine learning, training and education.
• Coherence in healthcare: Promotion of cross-sectoral research on coherence in healthcare with the aim of providing patient-centered, world class clinical treatment targeted chronically ill patients with concomitant diseases.
• Innovative therapies: Accelerating translation of new scientific discoveries and new technologies into improved preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and technologies for the benefit of patients, including cell- and gene-based therapies, genomic medicine and drug delivery.

For an overview of projects that have received funding within biomedicine and the health sciences, go to the list of grant recipients.