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Bo Ahrén

Scientific Advisory Board

Bo Ahren

Bo Ahrén MD, PhD is a leading researcher in diabetes and he is Professor in Clinical Metabolic Research at Lund University, Sweden since 1999. He has been working in the diabetes field for the past 45 years and his research has mainly focused on restoring pancreatic islet dysfunction and impaired insulin secretion in type 2 diabetes.

Bo Ahrén received his medical degree in 1977 at Lund University, Sweden and in 1981  his PhD at the same university.

He was the head of the Clinical Research Department of Lund University Hospital from 2001 to 2004, Chief Physician at the County of Skåne from 2004 to 2005, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Lund University from 2006 to 2011 and from 2015 to 2020 Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Lund  university. He is also a consultant in endocrinology and diabetology at the Department of Endocrinology at Skåne University Hospital, Sweden. Since 2015 he is also chairman of LU Holding, a holding company associated to Lund university focusing on spinning out research from the university. Previously, he has served as Director at the Board of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Denmark 2005-2017, and, since 2016, he’s serving as  Member of  the Board of the Bioinnvoation Institute, Denmark focusing on investing in start-up life-science companies.

Dr Ahrén has also worked to develop new targets and compounds for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and he was instrumental in the early development of GLP-1 receptor agonists and DPP-4 inhibitors already in the 1990s. In this area, Dr Ahrén has during many years concentrated on incretin actions with particular emphasis on developing new treatment based on the incretin hormone glucagon-like peptide-1.

Bo Ahrén has served as official opponent and assessor for >25 PhD theses (1996-2015) and has supervised 28 PhD theses (1984-2020).

The scientific publications which has combined basic science with clinically oriented research comprises >700 original papers, several of which were published in high-impact journals, such as Diabetes and Diabetologia. 31367 citations, h-index 84 (web of science).

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