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 the KI Principal Investigator for several ongoing EU Horizon projects, as well as the Leducq network of excellence ATHENA, and La Caixa project AtheroPTM. 

Ljubica Matic works as expert reviewer for the Swedish Research Council, Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation, European Research Council, British and Dutch Heart Foundations, Danish Cardiovascular Academy, etc. She is elected Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), Steering Board Member for the KI Research Incubator (KIRI), member of the Women’s Leadership Committee in the International Society of Applied Cardiovascular Biomedicine, and Management Committee member for the EU COST actions AtheroNET and CardioPharmaGENET.

Her editorial work includes positions as Editorial Board member for the Vascular Pharmacology journal, and Associated Editor of the Atheroclerosis journal. She has >110 publications with over 5500 citations and h-index 46. 

Matic group (https://linktr.ee/ljubicamatic) utilizes innovative, integrated in silico pipelines for exploration of the Biobank of Karolinska Endarterectomy (BiKE, est 2002), Biobank of Karolinska lower limb Peripheral Arterial Disease (BiKPAD, est 2025) and Biobank of Karolinska Smooth Muscle Cells (BiKSMC, est 2024), to identify smooth muscle cell related targets that stand in direct causal relationship with human vascular disease. Target discovery via AI/ML guided multi-modal data integrations, is followed by phenotyping, challenge and proof-of-concept interventional studies in murine vascular injury and disease models, as well as in vitro investigations 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. To this end, she collaborates with Big Pharma and is a co-inventor of totally 21 patents, accelerating the developments from target discovery to patient treatments. 

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 acts as Assoc Director for the KI MSc Global Biomedicine program, elective track in Circulation, Metabolism and Endocrinology. 

Over the years, she has also organised free-standing international PhD courses in cardiovascular disease in the framework of the EU Horizon Marie Sklodowska Curie ITN projects, EU ERASMUS program, as well as courses in gold standard biobanking practices for the EU Widera program.