Johan Luthman
Executive Vice President, Head of R&D 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
- What recent Phase 2 and Phase 3 readouts have taught us about target validation in neuropsychiatric drug development?
- How can sponsors better address persistent challenges around placebo response, site quality and trial execution?
- To what extent do indication selection and patient population definitions influence the probability of success?
- How can biomarkers, precision psychiatry approaches and improved patient stratification help derisk future development programmes?
- What lessons from recent successes and setbacks should shape the next generation of neuropsychiatric clinical trials?
- 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
