Johan Luthman
Head Executive VP, Research & Development Lundbeck
As the Executive Vice President, Head of R&D at Lundbeck I work together with my talented team to be premiere in neuroscience research and development, translating forefront science into novel medicines to restore brain health and enable people impacted by brain disease to live a better life. With a focus on applying our leading capabilities in translating neurobiology insights into breakthrough medicines serving neurology, psychiatry, and pain indications where there are particularly high unmet medical needs. Prior to joining Lundbeck I worked with large, mid-sized pharma, and start-up biotech companies. My expertise lies in R&D line-management, project leadership, and program (portfolio) management, from target and drug discovery throughout to late development, for small molecules and biotherapeutics (mAbs and protein ligands) in the neuroscience area (neurology, psychiatry, and pain) and in the immunology & inflammation area (dermatology & rheumatology).
Seminars
- How late stage failures continue to stem from heterogeneous patient populations and poor endpoint sensitivity, underscoring the critical need for biomarker driven stratification to boost Phase 2/3 success rates
- What 2025–2026 taught us about placebo inflation, highlighted by recent schizophrenia and depression trial outcomes, and how study site variability, digital tools, and speech/physiological biomarkers may mitigate expectation bias
- Why translational gaps persist across muscarinic, psychedelic, and neuroplasticity based mechanisms, and how emerging mechanistic and genomic biomarkers can better link target engagement with clinical effects in Phase 2/3
- How sponsors are redesigning global Phase 2/3 execution—leveraging faster moving regions, adaptive designs, and early signal-detection: to overcome long timelines, recruitment bottlenecks, and historically low CNS trial success rates
- Exploring how EEG, molecular biomarkers, and AI enabled physiological readouts can shift psychiatry from symptom clusters toward biologically grounded disease mechanisms
- Evaluating emerging immunopsychiatry insights showing how neuroinflammatory pathways and immune driven circuit changes may redefine diagnostic boundaries and treatment selection
- Assessing where psychedelic therapeutics stand today and how mechanistic understanding of neuroplasticity and receptor level signaling may open new biological targets beyond traditional symptom based categories
- Reimagining psychiatric classification by inverting the genetics to genomics pyramid—integrating genetic, epigenetic, and molecular signatures to build biology informed diagnostic frameworks
