The Patent Revenue Fund for Research in Preventive Odontology
Established in 1963, The Swedish Patent Revenue Fund for Research in Preventive Odontology was originally founded on royalties from patents, primarily patents for addition of fluoride to dentifrices to prevent or arrest dental caries. The Fund is the largest non-public granting source for dental research in Sweden through its continued support of research into prevention of dental and oral diseases.
The two founders were Professor Yngve Ericsson (1912 – 1990) and Professor Göran Frostell (1920 – 2020), who both served as Presidents of the Foundation during its first four decades of existence.
Research Grants and Positions
The main objective of the Fund is to financially support applied research in preventive odontology, i.e. to bridge the gap between more basically oriented research, on the one hand, and the more registrative ’product controls’ common in clinical dentistry, on the other.
The Fund does this primarily by providing competitive research project grants, which are advertised once annually. With a special emphasis on caries prevention, the Fund supports all aspects of dental and oral prophylaxis research. Eligible for support are primarily Swedish researchers, but project applications from other Scandinavians within preventive odontological research may be funded as well.
The Fund also supports research in the prophylaxis field by granting researcher positions at different levels, such as PhD student positions, post-doc positions and junior researcher positions. Furthermore, the Fund has in the past instituted specific focused research programmes and may do so in the future.
In addition, the Swedish Patent Revenue Fund gives out two large research prizes.
The Yngve Ericsson Prize
Since 1988, the Yngve Ericsson Prize for Research in Preventive Odontology is awarded every three years in acknowledgement of outstanding scientific contributions to the prevention of oral diseases. This international Prize is named after the founder of the Patent Revenue Fund. It is since some years awarded in collaboration with ORCA – the European Organization for Caries Research.
Recipients for this Prize are nominated by the international research community subsequent to the Fund’s announcement. The prize awardees are then selected by a five-member Prize Committee appointed by the Patent Revenue Fund and ORCA, and the Prize is presented at the annual ORCA Congress.
The Yngve Ericsson Prize may be awarded to a single person but has, in fact, so far always been shared between two recipients. The current Prize sum is 300,000 SEK for one awardee and 2 x 200,000 SEK when shared between two persons.
You will find links to further information about the awardees for 2019 and 2016, respectively, and a list of all awardees since 1988 (in Swedish).
The Göran Frostell Prize
In order to support the recruitment of new researchers to the oral prophylaxis field, the Fund in 1998 instituted a new Prize for Younger Researchers in Preventive Odontology. To honor the other founder of the Patent Revenue Fund, its name was later altered to be the Göran Frostell Prize to Young Researchers in Preventive Odontology.
The aim with this Prize is to stimulate and support younger researchers at an early stage in their carreers, i.e. within 5 years from their PhD exam. The current Prize sum is 100,000 SEK, and candidates have to be nominated to be eligible.
Although, the Göran Frostell Prize may be awarded annually, this has not always been the case due to lack of qualified enough candidates. Awardees have, so far, been only Swedish, but nominations are welcome for candidates from other Scandinavian countries as well.
Further information (in Swedish) about the latest Prize recipient and a list of all awardees since 1999.
Board of Trustees and Administration
The Patent Revenue Fund is governed by a five-member Board of Trustees. Its members are each appointed for a 3-year period by the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Board of Social Welfare, Karolinska Institute and the founder Göran Frostell, respectively.
The activities and economy of the Foundation are audited annually by a licensed auditor. In addition, the Swedish Research Council appoints an auditor, whose responsibility it is to check whether the Foundation’s activities have been in agreement with the scientific intentions of its founders as described in the by-laws. The Foundation is also under the supervision of the Stockholm County Administrative Board (Länsstyrelsen) and the Governmental Auditing Agency, Kammarkollegiet.
The day-to day activities of the Patent Revenue Fund are managed by its President and its Secretary/Treasurer, and the Fund has a Secretariat which may be contacted for further information.
Further details and contact information may be found on Om PMF (in Swedish).