Lars Larrson, MD, PhD

Professor Larsson, formerly of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, winner of the 2017 Distinguished Scientist award from the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine and winner of the 2025 Ingvar Prize from the Swedish Society of Medicine, is Leksum’s Chief Scientific Officer. His muscle research spans four decades and Lars has been noted as the “most prolific author” in ICU-Acquired Weakness research. He has worked at the Karolinska Institute which awards the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology, the University of Uppsala, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Penn State University. He has lectured at Harvard University, Oxford University, the Pennsylvania State University (main campus), Hershey Medical Center, Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN), University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Kentucky University, Wayne State University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Vermont, University of Iowa, University of Texas AM, University of Florida, Berkeley University, University of Texas-Galveston, University of Texas Southwestern, McGill University, Tokyo University, Hiroshima University, Melbourne University, University of Western Australia Perth, Martin Luther-University Halle-Wirtenberg, Műnster University, Amsterdam University, Bonn University, Warsaw University, University of Florence, Padova University, Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine, King´s College, University of Liverpool, University of Newcastle, University of Manchester, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and various Scandinavian Universities (University of Copenhagen, Lund University, University of Gothenburg, Oslo University, Linköping University, Örebro University, Karolinska Institute, Uppsala University, University of Jyväskylä, Åbo Akademi, Umeå University).

Professor Larsson has published over 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers on multiple aspects of his work documenting his team’s extensive and successful research results. Professor Larsson has also delivered invited presentations at Eli Lilly and Company, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and Cytokinetics. The head of muscle at a Big Pharma company describes Professor Larsson as the world’s leading authority on muscle wasting in the ICU for the last 20 years.

He has personally diagnosed over 20,000 patients with neuromuscular disorders, including diagnosing the first-ever patient with ICU Critical Illness Myopathy (CIM) in Sweden in 1995. His work has enabled a detailed understanding of the mechanisms underlying the impaired muscle function and muscle wasting associated with aging and in the ICU including in ventilator-induced specific muscle diseases. He has focused on physiological and pathophysiological changes of the molecular motor protein myosin and its associated proteins and taken a translational approach combining experimental animal models with clinical studies in patients and healthy control subjects to develop effective and safe therapeutic interventions.

Professor Larsson has studied the regulation of muscle contraction at the motor protein and muscle cell levels and in the 3D organization of myonuclei in single muscle fibers in short single muscle fiber segments obtained from humans with the percutaneous muscle biopsy technique or from different experimental animal models.