Ljubica Matic

Ljubica Matic is Assoc Prof of Molecular Medicine and Principal Researcher in the Vascular Surgery Division at Karolinska Institute. She obtained her MSc degree in Molecular Biology from Belgrade University, Serbia and a PhD in Medical Biochemistry from Karolinska Institute in 2012. Since 2019 she is Group Leader for Translational Vascular Medicine at the Center for Molecular Medicine, KI dedicated to translational research on novel therapeutic and diagnostic targets for the management of cardiovascular disease, specifically atherosclerosis and restenosis complications. Her work has over the years been distinguished with grants and awards from the Swedish Research Council, Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation, Swedish Society for Medical Research, KI Faculty Consolidator grant, American Heart Association (Daniel Steinberg Early Career Investigator award in 2023) and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Sven and Ebba Hagberg Award in 2019). She is PI for several ongoing EU Horizon projects and expert reviewer for the Danish Cardiovascular Academy, French National Research Agency (ANR), Rumanian National Research council, Polish National Research Council, Austrian National Science Fund, Swiss National Science Foundation, Dutch Innovative Research Incentives Scheme (VIDI), Dutch Heart Foundation, UK National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs). Ljubica Matic is editorial board member for the Vascular Pharmacology journal, she has about 100 publications with over 4 500 citations and h-index 34. 

Matic group (https://linktr.ee/ljubicamatic) utilizes innovative, integrated multi-omics in silico pipelines for exploration of the Biobank of Karolinska Endarterectomy (BiKE, est 2002, over 1800 patients) to identify smooth muscle cell related targets that stand in direct causal relationship to human vascular disease. Target discovery is followed by phenotyping, challenge and proof-of-concept interventional studies in mice vascular injury and disease models, as well as in vitro studies using primary human smooth muscle cells. With this multi-disciplinary approach, the mission of Ljubica Matic is to create a powerful platform for extrapolation of basic research results into the various realms of clinical cardiovascular disease, leading to accelerated development from target discovery to patient treatment.

Since 2004, Ljubica Matic has continuously devoted 20% of her time to pedagogical work as a lecturer, supervisor and course leader for PhD students in the Cardiovascular Program and undergraduate students in the Medicine and Biomedicine Programs at KI. Since 2013 she has been Director for the PhD course in Vascular Cell Biology, Cardiovascular Program, KI. Since 2021 she also acts as co-Director in the KI MSc Global Biomedicine program, elective track in Circulation, Metabolism and Endocrinology. She has also organised international PhD courses in the framework of the EU Horizon Marie Sklodowska Curie ITN projects.