Oscar Horwath

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Karolinska Institutet

My research focuses on skeletal muscle physiology. I am particularly interested in understanding how this tissue adapts, or fails to adapt, to physiological challenges such as exercise, injury, inflammation, denervation, and disease.

One major focus of my research is the ribosome, the cellular machinery responsible for protein synthesis. Here, we investigate the emerging concept that ribosomes are not simply uniform entities but may differ in their protein composition and functional properties. We seek to understand how such variations influence muscle adaptation, regeneration, and function, with a particular emphasis on how ribosome heterogeneity contributes to the aging process and age-related declines in muscle health. This work is supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Swedish Society for Medical Research.

A second line of research examines the physiology of cerebral palsy (CP), a condition resulting from an early-life brain injury. Individuals with CP often experience health challenges typically associated with aging, raising the possibility of an accelerated aging phenotype. My research integrates analyses of skeletal muscle, circulating biomarkers, and responses to adapted exercise interventions to better understand the mechanisms underlying these changes. Ultimately, we aim to identify strategies that preserve muscle health, improve function, and support healthy aging in individuals with CP.