Purpose
The Challenge Programme aims to contribute substantially to the development of Danish and European research ecosystems within research areas of strategic priority to the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The goal is to develop innovative solutions to major scientific challenges, supporting leading researchers to form a consortium united by a clear vision and mission.
The Programme provides funding to enable scientific depth and focus and facilitate synergy between the research partners.
The grants awarded within the Challenge Programme will broadly fit within the Novo Nordisk Foundation Strategy.
Join us for an informational webinar 9 June 2026 at 14:00 CEST where you can learn more about the scientific scope and eligibility criteria for the Challenge Programme 2027 – Advancing Next Generation AMR Diagnostics for Lower Respiratory Tract Infections.
We also encourage you to pre-submit questions which we will answer at the end of the webinar. Send your questions to [email protected]. Please include the name of the call “Advancing Next Generation AMR diagnostics for LRTIs”
Research Theme 2027
Lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) cause substantial hospitalisation and death worldwide, with 20–30% due to antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Diagnosis and antimicrobial susceptibility testing are often too slow or inaccurate to guide timely treatment, leading to inappropriate broad-spectrum antibiotic use, and few rapid AST technologies are currently able to replace conventional bacteriology, particularly in low-resource settings.
Through this challenge programme, the Novo Nordisk Foundation aims to support early-stage proof-of-concept research that will enable the development of rapid, minimally invasive and affordable testing for LRTIs at the point-of-care in global settings. Delivering this goal will require close inter-disciplinary collaboration between microbiologists, clinicians, physicists, computer scientists and other life-science disciplines to inform clinical utility and implementability of the proposed technologies. Please note that the research must be anchored at a research institution or non-profit organisation, and that for-profit product development/optimisation is out of scope for this call.
Submitted proposals should aim to generate fundamental knowledge that is highly creative and innovative, as well as transformative for the LRTI and AMR diagnostics field. The goal of this programme is to provide a foundation for solutions that enable minimally invasive, direct from specimen rapid diagnosis of LRTIs, which can ultimately become globally deployable.
Supported research may include, but is not limited to:
- Technological advancements (e.g. microfluidics, optics, biosensing or other promising technologies) targeted at improving respiratory sample collection or processing to enable rapid pathogen separation and/or concentration.
- Establishing the scientific and clinical validity of minimally invasive techniques and/or identifying relevant biomarkers in proxy samples for rapid diagnosis, to identify new analytes indicative of infection and LRTI causative agents (e.g. in breath, blood, urine, upper respiratory samples). This may include transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics for host response, pathogen identification or antibiotic susceptibility.
- Discovery of host and/or pathogen analytes or biometrics (e.g. through applying supervised machine learning or mining of existing datasets and sample biobanks) that facilitate differentiation between commensal and disease-causing pathogens. This may include antibody responses or antigen detections that correlate with prediction of LRTI and/or aetiology.
- Advancing predictive capabilities of antimicrobial susceptibility gene testing by establishing and optimising accurate genotype-phenotype correlations.
Project proposals must:
- Clearly describe how the project outputs will deliver significant improvements for LRTI diagnostics compared to the currently available technologies, such as dramatically reduced turnaround time to pathogen identification and susceptibility profile, practical deployment/availability in low-resource settings and/or improved sampling techniques.
- Describe how the project will support diversity (for example, gender and career level) and consider the setting and populations impacted by the disease, within the assembled consortium.
Out of scope:
- Projects which are mainly focused on surveillance, establishment/maintaining infrastructure, and clinical trial(s) will not be considered for funding, and for-profit product development projects are ineligible.
Eligibility
The Challenge Programme supports collaboration between leading scientific experts to form a consortium of 2-4 research groups (main applicant plus 1-3 co-applicants).
- The main applicant must be an independent tenured/tenure-track researcher with their own research group, employed at a European (European Union, Schengen Area plus United Kingdom) university, hospital, or non-profit research organisation, which will be the host institution and will be responsible for administration of the grant.
- The main applicant must be employed at the host institution with at least a 75% commitment and must be guaranteed their own salary for the entire project period.
- Co-applicant institutions may be located anywhere globally.
- At least one applicant (either main- or co-applicant) must be at least 75% employed and have their research group at a Danish university, hospital, or non-profit research organisation at the time of submission.
Industry collaboration is allowed, but industrial partners cannot receive funding
General rules for applications:
Applicants are only permitted to submit one proposal as main applicant across all four Challenge Programme 2027 calls. If a proposal is submitted as main applicant, the applicant cannot at the same time be a co-applicant on a different proposal.
Funding
A total budget of up to DKK 150 million (ca. EUR 20 million) is available for grants up to DKK 30 – 75 million (ca. EUR 4 – 10 million) for projects of 6 years duration.
Application process
There are 2 stages to the application process. Stage 1 consists of an expression of interest. After the initial evaluation, shortlisted applicants will be invited to submit a proposal in Stage 2, consisting of a comprehensive application with a detailed project proposal along with a detailed budget.
As part of the Stage 2 evaluation, the applicants will be invited to present and discuss their proposed research projects with the review panel in an online meeting.
Please read “Guidelines for Applicants” carefully before initiating the application process. Additional and essential information is found in these guidelines.
Click here to read more about the Challenge Programme and to see a list of previous Grant recipients.
Access FAQ through link: here
Contact e-mail: [email protected]. Please include the name of the call “Advancing Next Generation AMR diagnostics for LRTIs” in the subject line.
