Since 2019, the Lund-based foundations have invited the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Engineering (LTH) at Lund University, as well as Malmö University, to put forward applications each year. The foundations look for projects with high innovation potential and near-term benefit to society.

From brain tumors to universal blood

Several of this year’s projects take new approaches to cancer. They include targeting drugs directly at tumor cells in the brain, making the manufacture of CAR-T cell therapies faster and more reliable, and using patients’ own gene-corrected stem cells to treat the blood cancer myelofibrosis. Other projects explore how blood can be made usable regardless of ABO blood group, how AI can visualize muscle activity, and how a new HDL-based treatment could protect blood vessels from damage and inflammation.

“This year’s applications have been of very high scientific quality. They combine new thinking with concrete plans for bringing the results into healthcare or developing them into new products and services. Several of the projects are in advanced cell and gene therapies or other new cancer treatments. These are areas we especially highlight in our call, where research can open up new options for patients who currently have few treatment alternatives,” says Thomas Laurell, Professor at Lund University and member of the foundations’ Research and Innovation Council.

Prize for lab-grown human tissue

This year’s Göran Grosskopf Prize for Scientific Excellence goes to a project on programmable human tissue engineering, led by Henrik Ahlenius, Senior Lecturer at Lund University. The prize was established in 2025 in honor of the foundations’ longtime chairman and is being awarded for the second time. The project develops technology to steer stem cells into forming human tissue. A model of brain tissue has been developed first, and work is now moving toward models of other tissues. The approach makes it possible to study how different cells interact in disease and to test the safety of new drugs. It could also reduce the need for animal testing.

Research park funds research

Since they were founded, the foundations have donated a total of SEK 280 million to research. Much of this funding comes from Medicon Village in Lund, Scandinavia’s largest life science research park. Medicon Village is owned by the Mats Paulsson Foundation for Research, Innovation and Society Building, and most of the surplus from its property operations goes back into research grants.