Name Jan Lotvall | ||
Jan Lötvall (also spelled Lotvall, born 7 December 1956) is a Swedish clinical allergist and scientist working on translational research primarily in the field of asthma. He is the director of the Krefting Research Centre at the University of Gothenburg.
Lötvall led the research that discovered RNA in exosomes, showing a new communication route between cells by the transfer of RNA via exosomes.
Lötvall has been a member of the Executive Committee of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology since 2001, was its secretary general from 2005 to 2009, and its president from June 2009 to June 2011. Lötvall is also co-editor-in-chief of Respiratory Research. He is also the first president of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (2012-2016) and chaired the first society meeting in Gothenburg, in April 2012.
Lötvall started studying medicine at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm in 1981, but moved to Gothenburg in 1985 and graduated from the Medical School of the University of Gothenburg in 1987. He became interested in asthma research in the mid-1980s. After having studied for 2.5 years as a visiting fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute, London (July 1988- December 1990), Lötvall defended his thesis in February 1991. He has done clinical training in both pharmacology and allergology, and became a specialist in each of these in 1997 and 1999 respectively. He became associate professor (docent) at the University of Gothenburg in 1993 and full professor of clinical allergology in 2002. In 2016, he took on a position as Chief Scientist at the startup biotech company Codiak BioSciences, to develop exosomes as therapeutics.