Founded 1966 | ||
The novo nordisk foundation center for biosustainability
The Novo Nordisk Foundation is an international foundation focusing on medical treatment and research. It is situated in Denmark.
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The Foundation is the primary owner of Novo Nordisk A/S and NovoZymes A/S through its subsidiary company called Novo A/S. Aside from Novo Nordisk and Novozymes, the foundation is also a major shareholder in more than 75 other companies.
The Foundation hands out more than 300 million US dollars each year to research within the fields of Life- and Bioscience.
The current chairman of the Novo Nordisk Foundation is Sten Scheibye, while Birgitte Nauntofte is the current CEO.
Objectives and purposes
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has a 90-year history. In 1922, Danish professor August Krogh received a permission to produce insulin in the Nordic countries. This sparked the development of high quality diabetes medicine as we know it today, and also the beginning of a Danish business and export venture.
At the same time, several foundations were established as a result, all of which has today merged into the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
It has since 2010 donated more than 1.3 billion US dollars for research, innovation, treatment, education and humanitarian and social purposes.
The Foundation also awards grants for research, primarily at public universities and hospitals. While the main focus lies within biomedicine and biotechnology research, the Foundation also awards grants for research in general practice and family medicine, nursing and art history.
The Foundation gets its income from dividends and returns on investments in life-science companies and financial investments made by Novo A/S, a private limited liability company wholly owned by the Foundation. Novo A/S is also the holding company in the Novo Group and responsible for managing the Foundation’s assets.
In recent years, the Foundation has increased its focus on innovation, diabetes treatment and grants for humanitarian and social purposes. In 2016 the Foundation awarded a little over 420 million US dollars to the Capital Region of Denmark to establish Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, a diabetes treatment and research institution.