Göran K Hansson
Professor of Experimental Cardiovascular Research.
Göran K Hansson was appointed professor in 1994. He is active at the Department of Medicine, Solna.
Göran Hansson was born in Lysekil in 1951, studied medicine in Gothenburg and qualified as a doctor in 1977. He presented a doctoral dissertation in the histology of endothelial cells at the University of Gothenburg in 1980, and was appointed associate professor the following year. He worked as post-doctoral researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle during the years 1981-1982.
He was certified as a doctor in 1985 following his internship, and worked as junior doctor in internal medicine and clinical chemistry at the Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg. He was appointed as specialist in clinical chemistry in 1989, and worked on a special research appointment in cardiovascular research from the Medical Research Council during the period 1990-1994.
He worked as professor in cell biology at the University of Gothenburg 1994-1995, and was appointed as professor in experimental cardiovascular research at Karolinska Institutet in December 1994. He works in the Department of Medicine at Solna, at the Center for Molecular Medicine (CMM).
Göran Hansson holds many posts both within and beyond Karolinska Institutet. He is, among other things, secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, member of the Karolinska Institutet Nobel Assembly and vice chairman of the board of the Nobel Foundation. Furthermore, he is scientific advisor to the Wihuri Research Institute in Helsinki, the Centre for Biomolecular Medicine in Vienna and the Wesley Research Institute in Brisbane, having previously held similar positions at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in San Francisco and Oxford University. Göran Hansson has been European editor of the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, Consulting Editor for the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and is member of the editorial board of Circulation, among other journals.
About the research area
Göran Hansson's research concerns the interplay between the immune system and blood vessels, and the origin of hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis). He discovered in 1985 that the process in which the arteries harden has an immunological-inflammatorial component, and has later shown that it is partly driven by an autoimmune reaction against oxidised lipoproteins. He has also shown that inflammatory cytokines play a key role in the disease, and that a protective immune response counteracts the pathological process.
Göran Hansson has received many awards for his research, including the Eric K Fernström prize for young researchers (1992), the Lars Werkö prize for heart-lung research (1998), the American AEHA Vulnerable plaque lifetime achievement award (2003) and the Dutch Eijkman medal (2003).
