Novo Nordisk Foundation Inter-SUSTAIN (Part 2 – For Researchers)

Funding for researchers based in the UK and Nordic countries for research projects in the fields of cardiometabolic disease (CMD), infectious disease, and regenerative medicine research using data from databases supported by Inter-SUSTAIN.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF – Novo Nordisk Fonden) is an independent Danish foundation that oversees the commercial and research activities of the companies within the Novo Group. NNF contributes around DKK 5 billion each year for scientific research and humanitarian and social purposes. Its grant programme focuses mainly on Denmark and the Nordic countries, but also includes funding for international collaboration, strategic international initiatives and awards for outstanding researchers.

NNF has allocated a total budget of DKK 75 million over three years for its Inter-SUSTAIN programme (Part 1 and Part 2) to stimulate and support the development, refinement and use of high-quality international databases for research within cardiometabolic diseases (CMD), infectious diseases, and regenerative medicine.

Inter-SUSTAIN involves a dual funding mechanism to support both databases and researchers. The call will be implemented in two parts:

• Part 1: high-quality databases will be screened and shortlisted by the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF). Databases do not need to focus on CMD, infectious disease, and regenerative medicine but must contain data which may be used for research within these themes. No funding will be granted in Part 1.
• Part 2: will run as an open competition call for high-quality research projects that focus on CMD, infectious disease and regenerative medicine and make use of existing data from one of shortlisted databases from Part 1. Researchers will submit their research proposal and be evaluated and selected for funding by the Committee on Clinical and Translational Medicine. Databases selected by the awarded researchers will also receive funding. As part of the application process, researchers must consult the database custodian of the selected database to ensure that their research proposal is feasible to execute their projects

The overall purpose of Inter-SUSTAIN is to advance science by stimulating the custodians of high-quality international databases to make their data attractive, accessible and usable for the research community in the Nordic Countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland) and the UK, specifically for research within cardiometabolic diseases (CMD), infectious diseases, and regenerative medicine.

The dual funding mechanism will make funding available to both database custodians and researchers utilising the data for the projects. The call aims at strengthening the infrastructure of the database and fostering researcher collaborations with users external to the database. Any new data generated by the research will be added to the database, enhancing its content and attractiveness.

Under Inter-SUSTAIN Part 2 (for researchers) funding is available for projects with clear relevance to research within CMD, infectious disease, or regenerative medicine, including but not limited to mechanisms, prevention, prognosis, diagnosis, methodologies, or epidemiology.

The NNF defines databases as any datasets and the infrastructure around them which allows data collection, annotation, integration, cleaning, management, and efforts that promotes FAIR- and, when applicable, CARE principles as well as secure and ethical use of data.