Nordic Life Science 1
24 really speak about life sciences in Denmark wi
thout mentioning its large industrial foundations and how they have benefited the industry. These longterm investors have benefited both the pharma and biotech industries; industries known for their long development times. “As long-term owners of companies, the foundations enable these companies to plan long term. This helps to create a stable operating environment and ensure important strategic development. Foundation ownership also protects the companies from takeovers, as has happened to life science companies in Sweden for example. This ensures that important knowledge, technology, production and talented employees continue to contribute to developing Danish society,” explains Steffen Lüders, Senior Vice President, Communication at the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF). Together with the Lundbeck Foundation, Dr. Frederik Paulsen Foundation and the LEO Foundation, the NNF controls the ownership of Denmark’s largest life science companies, Novo Nordisk, Lundbeck, Ferring and LEO Pharma. “We are an independent Danish foundation with corporate interests. We have two overall objectives. The first is to provide a stable basis for the commercial and research activities of the companies in the Novo Group, which are Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S. The second is to support scientific, humanitarian and social causes through our grant-giving activities,” says Lüders. The Novo Nordisk Foundation dates back to 1922, when the Nobel Laureate August Krogh returned home from the US and Canada with permission to produce insulin in the Nordic countries. Right from the start the founders placed the company and its responsibilities in a foundation structure, called the Nordisk Insulin Foundation, and it was stated that the profit from the sale of diabetes medicine would be used for scientific and humanitarian purposes. However, just a few years later, in 1924, as a result of a disagreement, one of the employees, Thorvald Pedersen, was fired. This led to his brother, Harald Pedersen, resigning as well, and the two brothers then established their own insulin company, Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium. Over subsequent decades the two companies were rivals, and in 1951 the Pedersen brothers also established a foundation, called the Novo Foundation. In 1989, the Boards of the foundations agreed to merge the two foundations into the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Merging the foundations allowed one foundation to exercise the controlling interest in Novo and Nordisk, which thereby enabled the two companies to merge into Novo Nordisk A/S. Three years later the NNF became an independent actor with its own management and administration, but it was not until 1999–2000 the foundation stepped into the limelight in its own right, as a result of major changes in the Novo Group. The company was split into two, one for healthcare, which retained the name Novo Nordisk A/S, and one for the enzyme business, which became Novozymes A/S. Separate boards with new members for the two companies were established and the NNF also established a wholly owned subsidiary, Novo A/S, to manage the foundation’s interests in the two operating companies, to maintain a stable basis for the companies and to ensure sufficient income for the foundation’s grant activities. Since then the NNF has awarded over 12,000 grants for research and other purposes benefiting the society, and Steffen Lüders emphasizes that the freedom and independence of research is very much respected – meaning that all grants come with full research and publishing freedom and they never ask for any rights or IP. “The freedom of research is very much at the heart of our work,” he says.