Rate My Professor Rikard Holmdahl

Rikard Holmdahl is a Visiting Professor at Uppsala University's Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, where he leads the Medical Inflammation Research (MIR) group within the Infection and Immunity program. He obtained his PhD in Medical Biochemistry in 1985 and his MD in 1987 from Uppsala University, beginning his research career there in the immunology department under Hans Wigzell. Following clinical residency training at Uppsala University Hospital (1988-1989) and a research fellowship with the Swedish Medical Research Council (1990-1993), he was appointed Professor of Medical Inflammation Research at Lund University in 1993, where he founded and headed the MIR unit until 2008. He then served as Professor and head of the Medical Inflammation Research section at Karolinska Institutet from 2008 to 2025 before his recruitment to Uppsala University from January 2026.

Holmdahl's research centers on the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying autoimmune diseases, with a particular emphasis on rheumatoid arthritis. His group investigates redox regulation, innate immunity, tissue-specific factors, and critical genes like Ncf1 that control immune tolerance and inflammation. Pioneering work includes positional cloning of Ncf1 polymorphisms linked to disease susceptibility, development of animal models such as collagen-induced arthritis, and studies on autoantibodies including anti-citrullinated protein antibodies. Current projects advance diagnostics like JointID for early rheumatoid arthritis detection and engineering of tolerogenic vaccines to induce regulatory T cells. Notable publications include 'Guidelines for the use of flow cytometry and cell sorting in immunological studies' (2019), 'Identification of oxidative stress and Toll-like receptor 4 signaling as a key pathway of acute lung injury' (2008), 'Aggregated neutrophil extracellular traps limit inflammation by degrading cytokines and chemokines' (2014), 'Anti-citrullinated protein antibodies cause arthritis by cross-reactivity to joint cartilage' (2017), and 'Epitopes targeted by autoantibodies in presymptomatic individuals predict early rheumatoid arthritis' (2025). His contributions have garnered major awards, including the Göran Gustafsson Prize in Medicine (1994), European Descartes Prize (2002), SalusAnsvar Nordic Medical Prize (2003), and Anders Jahre Main Scientific Prize (2015), profoundly impacting immunology and rheumatology fields.