No easy answers: European research consortia take on major challenges
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, July 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nine new Challenge Programme grants from the Novo Nordisk Foundation will support ambitious research across fungal diseases, cardiometabolic disease, soil health and non-equilibrium biological systems. With a European expansion, the 2026 awards unite strong research groups and diverse expertise across Europe in the pursuit of novel knowledge addressing major scientific challenges.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has awarded nine grants through the 2026 Challenge Programme, supporting interdisciplinary research projects that address major challenges within human and planetary health.
Together, the grants amount to up to €80 million (DKK 600 million). Each project will receive funding for up to six years, enabling research teams to pursue questions that require long-term collaboration, scientific depth and expertise across disciplines and institutions.
What defines healthy soils and the behaviour of biological systems out of equilibrium?
Four of the nine grants are awarded within themes related to advancing fundamental knowledge within planetary science and technology.
In the theme “Harnessing biology for climate-resilient and healthy soils”, one project aims to quantify active soil microbial (and selected faunal) activity and integrate these data with gross bio-geochemical process rates to build a soil health framework that improves predictability and supports clearer distinctions between ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ soils.
Another project aims to deliver the first predictive framework for biodiversity-driven soil multifunctionality by utilising a novel ‘soil health hypersurface’ approach integrating biodiversity science, soil science, and computational tools.
In the theme “Biological systems under non-equilibrium conditions”, one project will enhance our understanding of how electric fields influence the cytoskeleton and alter cell behaviour. The overall aim is to provide the first integrated framework and toolkit for measuring cytoplasmic electricity, extending non-equilibrium physics into active electrohydrodynamics with relevance to medical strategies exploiting electric fields for tissue repair, regeneration, and cancer therapy.
Another project will explore how local cell–cell interactions can generate robust tissue-scale organisation without central control. The aim is to create an atlas of non-equilibrium information flows that can ultimately help us understanding tissue robustness, regeneration, and disease progression by using predictive physics of multicellularity.
“Understanding what defines healthy soils, the basis for all living matter, and how biological systems function under inherent non-equilibrium conditions, are grand fundamental challenges. Obtaining insights in these areas can open new paths towards more sustainable solutions in agriculture and will provide new understanding of how life organises itself, potentially leading to the formulation of novel therapeutic approaches. The 2026 Challenge Programme grants bring together strong European research environments focusing on accelerating knowledge within these important areas in a collaborative fashion. The projects that we have granted demonstrate that the programme’s expanded scope successfully unites the strongest research environments across Europe in addressing urgent scientific challenges,” says Lene Oddershede, Chief Scientific Officer, Planetary Science & Technology, Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Advancing knowledge across human and planetary health
Five of the nine grants are awarded within health-related research.
In the theme “Unravelling the pathways of human invasive fungal diseases”, one project aims to unravel the pathways leading to mycetoma development by generating fundamental insights into disease pathogenesis and to exploit this knowledge for early translation into novel diagnostic tools and drug targets.
Another project will use multi-omics and advanced labelling techniques to create the first ‘fungal extracellular vesicles (EV) atlas’ with the aim of characterising novel interactions between EVs and human immune cells.
A third project aims to comprehensively investigate the immune cells and pathways that protect the brain from cryptococcal infection to identify which aspects of the immune response are required for protection, and which aspects drive pathology.
In the theme “Modelling of human cardiometabolic diseases”, one project will create a scalable, human-based drug discovery platform by using stem cells to grow the key brain cells that control hunger and satiety. The aim is to build a robust, high-throughput “human-first” pipeline that speeds discovery of safer, affordable, orally available anti-obesity medicines.
Another project focuses on enhancing our understanding of the multi-organ biology that drives the development of heart disease, fatty liver and diabetes. The aim is to build a platform that will recreate early disease processes such as unhealthy fat handling, inflammation and plaque-like changes, eventually enabling more personalised prevention and treatment of cardiometabolic disease.
“Better diagnostics, disease models and treatment strategies depend on a deeper understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying disease. The projects funded through the 2026 Challenge Programme in this area bring together highly specialised expertise across countries and fields to address complementary and high-priority gaps. This is likely to generate widely applicable insights that can accelerate progress across Europe as well as globally,” says Flemming Konradsen, Chief Scientific Officer, Health, Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Uniting the broader European research base
The 2026 grants represent an important development for the Challenge Programme. For the first time, researchers at institutions across Europe could apply as main applicants, making it possible for the programme to draw on a broader range of research environments and expertise.
That development is reflected in the grants awarded: seven of the nine projects are led by researchers based outside Denmark, with main applicants from the Netherlands, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Austria, Finland and Switzerland. All nine projects include Danish research partners, maintaining a strong connection to the Danish research ecosystem while bringing more European research environments and expertise into the programme.
The Challenge Programme is intended to enable researchers to address grand challenges that are too complex for one discipline or institution to solve alone. Across the 2026 grants, the projects bring together complementary expertise and methods in areas such as clinical and biomedical research, microbiology, ecology, physics, engineering and computational approaches.
The 2026 Challenge Programme grants
In 2026, a total of up to €80 million (DKK 600 million) was awarded across nine projects, with individual grants of up to €10 million (DKK 75 million) over six years.
The following projects have received funding in 2026:
Theme 1: Harnessing biology for climate-resilient and healthy soils
Andreas Richter, University of Vienna, Austria
“ActiveSOIL – From Active Microbiomes to Soil Health”
Up to DKK 75 million over 6 years.
Anna-Liise Laine, University of Helsinki, Finland
“Harnessing Biodiversity to Navigate Trade-offs and Enhance Soil Health”
Up to DKK 75 million over 6 years.
Theme 2: Unravelling the pathways of human invasive fungal diseases
Wendy van de Sande, Erasmus University Medical Center, the Netherlands
“Unravelling host-pathogen pathways in mycetoma: the route towards novel diagnostic tools and therapies for controlling mycetoma globally (UNRAVELMy)”
Up to DKK 50.7 million over 6 years.
Attila Gacser, University of Szeged, Hungary
“CLEVER: Consortium Linking Extracellular Vesicle Efforts in Research of Invasive Fungal Infections”
Up to DKK 49.7 million over 6 years.
Rebecca Drummond, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
“Unlocking the mechanisms of brain-specific anti-fungal immunity: UMBRA”
Up to DKK 49.7 million over 6 years.
Theme 3: Modelling of human cardiometabolic diseases
Matthew Gillum, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
“Knockout human ‘brains in a vat’ to discover novel anti-obesity medications”
Up to DKK 75 million over 6 years.
Stephen Malin, Karolinska Institute, Sweden
“HICONIC: Human Integrative Cardiometabolic Organ Networks in Microfluidic iPSC Culture”
Up to DKK 75 million over 6 years.
Theme 4: Biological systems under non-equilibrium conditions
Charlotte Aumeier, University of Geneva, Switzerland
“Cytoskeletal networks as active ionic liquids”
Up to DKK 75 million over 6 years.
Amin Doostmohammadi, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
“ALIVE: Center for Active Living Matter – Information, Vitality, and Emergence”
Up to DKK 74.9 million over 6 years.
About the Novo Nordisk Foundation Challenge Programme
The Challenge Programme targets ambitious research projects within annually selected themes that address some of the major societal and planetary challenges. Every year, the Novo Nordisk Foundation defines new themes that comprise the framework for calls for applications in open competition within that one year.
The Challenge Programme gives leading researchers the opportunity to assemble a strong team that can collaborate to develop solutions to the challenges. The programme provides substantial, long-term funding to enable scientific depth and focus and facilitate synergy between the research partners.
For the 2026 call, the Challenge Programme was expanded to include European main applicants. Each consortium must include two to four research groups, and at least one applicant must be based at a Danish university, hospital or non-profit research organisation. Co-applicant institutions may be located anywhere globally.
Find more information about the Challenge Programme, including the 2027 themes, here.
About the Novo Nordisk Foundation
Established in Denmark in 1924, the Novo Nordisk Foundation is an enterprise foundation with philanthropic objectives. The vision of the Foundation is to improve people’s health and the sustainability of society and the planet. The Foundation’s mission is to progress research and innovation in the prevention and treatment of cardiometabolic and infectious diseases as well as to advance knowledge and solutions to support a green transformation of society.
Media enquiries
Sabina Askholm Larsen, Senior Communications Partner, sla@novo.dk
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