Can you tell me a little about your research area? How would you describe your work?
I am a professor at Lund University and a physician with a background in orthopedics. My research focuses broadly on osteoarthritis, particularly knee osteoarthritis. We conduct studies in laboratory environments, patient-centered clinical settings, and registry-based research, investigating everything from molecular mechanisms to societal impacts.
I lead a relatively large research group (around 20 people) with several senior colleagues (associate professors) possessing different expertise, along with postdoctoral researchers and PhD students. You can find more about our work at www.clin-epi.com. Additionally, I am the founder and director of the Osteoarthritis Portal and currently serve as President of the internationally leading osteoarthritis research organization, Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI), until April 2026. More details can be found here: OARSI Board of Directors.
Can you talk about your ongoing research projects?
I am involved in many different projects, including both patient-focused clinical research and several laboratory-based studies (preclinical research).
One exciting initiative we are currently conducting in the laboratory, together with Associate Professor Patrik Önnerfjord, involves simulating gait using tissue samples containing live cells. We use a specialized instrument to mimic normal tissue loading—such as walking in a healthy-weight individual—as well as increased loading conditions, such as walking after a meniscus injury or significant obesity, which places greater stress on cartilage.
While we know that joints benefit from an optimal amount of loading, we know less about when healthy loading transitions into excessive and harmful loading. For example, after a meniscus injury, the cartilage may experience higher stress levels than it would normally. However, what happens to the cartilage cells in response to this stress is still unclear. We are measuring proteins that are released or newly produced to understand how cartilage cells respond to different loading conditions. These experiments can last for several weeks and involve complex measurements of thousands of proteins.
What do you hope will happen in your research field?
We hope to make a breakthrough in understanding the molecular changes that occur when healthy loading turns into harmful loading. There is a delicate balance between the regenerative and degenerative processes naturally occurring in joints, and various factors can disturb this equilibrium. Additionally, we aim to identify potential new therapeutic targets for drug development—whether to slow down, prevent, or ideally reverse osteoarthritis progression.
What do you consider your greatest contribution to your research field so far?
Internationally, I am best known for my significant contributions to understanding degenerative meniscus injuries in the knee—how they can impair meniscus function, contribute to osteoarthritis progression, and how common they actually are in the general population. For these discoveries, I have received multiple prestigious scientific awards in international competition.
Publications about the projects
There are no scientific publications yet from the relatively new laboratory project I mentioned earlier. However, here is a well-known early publication on how common meniscus injuries are in the population—along with how increasing body weight (overweight and obesity) helps explain the high prevalence of osteoarthritis:
