$112M awarded to DTU Biosustain for biochem and cell work

In Denmark, the country’s largest foundation, The Novo Nordisk Foundation, awarded a grant of about $112 million (EUR 100 million) to DTU Biosustain, to continue its research activities and focusing on three main areas: sustainable chemicals, bio-based products and microbial foods and feed ingredients.

The new funding period runs from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2025. Over the next five years, The Novo Nordisk Foundation will allocate a total of EUR 100 million to the DTU Biosustain research centre, for which the foundation also provided the economic framework when the centre was established in 2011.

Research within these areas will be an incentive to promote more sustainable lifestyles and use biology as a tool to develop bio-based products such as medicine, foodstuff ingredients and speciality chemicals – products which today are produced mainly through oil-based processes or by extracting valuable materials from rare plants, harming both the climate and the world’s biodiversity. This vision goes hand in hand with DTU’s decision to work strategically with the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.