The Lundbeck Foundation is ready to award historically large grants to brain research
With calls for applications for two major thematic grants, the Lundbeck Foundation is ready to provide funding of up to 250 million Danish kroner for brain research. The larger of the two is aimed at personalised medicine, supporting national strategy in this field.
Brain disorders cost society more than cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease together. Yet we still know far too little about both the healthy and the sick brain.
For this reason, the Lundbeck Foundation is calling for applications for thematic grants totalling DKK 250 million.
“The Lundbeck Foundation has an ambition to elevate Denmark to the ranks of the world’s leading brain research nations, and we’re now following this up with action. The two grants will be awarded to the most ground-breaking projects with the potential to increase our understanding of the mechanisms underlying brain disorders, helping ensure more precise diagnoses, improved prevention and more treatment options,” says Anne-Marie Engel, Director of Research at the Lundbeck Foundation.
Both grants are among the largest ever awarded in the history of the Foundation.
Supporting national strategy
The grant for DKK 100 million is aimed at research projects examining the causes of brain disorders, and the second grant, for DKK 150 million, targets personalised medicine for diseases of the brain.
“We see immense potential for more precise diagnoses and personalised therapies, so we’ve chosen to focus the largest thematic grant on personalised medicine. But we also based our decision on our very positive view of the national strategy for personalised medicine and we would like to play a role in supporting a good public initiative,” says Anne-Marie Engel.
The Danish Ministry of Health published the national strategy for personalised medicine at the end of 2016, and DKK 100 million was earmarked in the Budget for the launch of the project. The strategy includes establishment of a national genome centre to promote use of gene tests to describe development of a disease in an individual patient and to identify more precisely whether the person in question would benefit from a specific drug.
About the Lundbeck Foundation
The Lundbeck Foundation is one of Denmark’s largest enterprise foundations, worth over DKK 60 billion.
The Foundation works to create better life through new knowledge, with special focus on brain health. To this end, the Lundbeck Foundation awards grants of around DKK 500 million every year to Danish-based biomedical sciences research, about half of which goes to projects focusing on the brain.
The Lundbeck Foundation holds controlling interests in H. Lundbeck, ALK-Abelló and Falck, which together have a staff of over 40,000 in all corners of the world.
Application deadline and procedure
The application deadline for the call for proposals for the cause of brain disorders is 22 March 2018 and the deadline for applications for funding for projects on personalised medicine for brain disorders is 19 April 2018.
Read more about the calls for proposals and the application procedure here
