Matthias Löhr is the Professor of Gastroenterology & Hepatology at Karolinska Institutet. He is leading the Pancreatic Team at Karolinska University Hospital. He is the president of the United European Gastroenterology (UEG).
Löhr’s research focusses on pancreatic diseases, both clinically and in the lab. His focus is on chronic and autoimmune pancreatitis, pancreatic exocrine function and testing as well as the endo-exo-axis. He conducted several early phase clinical studies as a PI, including CT-PCA-1, EndoTAG-1, AXP107-11, PePaCaKa-01, MITIGATE. As special interest in on premalignant conditions (IPMN) and individuals at risk/hereditary pancreatic cancer.
In 1986, Löhr earned his MD at the Medical School of the University of Hamburg in Germany where he also did his MD thesis work in pancreatic pathology in collaboration with the Hagedorn Research Laboratory (Gentofte, Denmark). He is also holding an American MD degree (ECFMG). After graduating in 1986, he was a resident in pathology at the University of Hamburg before he took a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Immunology, Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation, La Jolla, CA.
Returning in 1989 to Germany, he started a residency in Internal Medicine at the Univ. of Erlangen. In 1993, he became chief resident and later attending physician at the Univ. of Rostock. Here, he also obtained his PhD (Dr. med. habil./Privatdocent). In 2000, he was appointed Professor of Molecular Gastroenterology at the Univ. of Heidelberg and became Head of the identical named division at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) that he led until 2010. In 2007, he was appointed as the professor of Gastroenterology & Hepatology at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. His research is funded by national and international sources including several ongoing EU projects PRECODE, PancAIM, PANCAID, and GUIDE.MRD.
Löhr is leading the European Educational Program for Future Pancreatologists, “Pancreas 2000”. He received the LINK award from the United European Gastroenterology (UEG) to conduct the first evidence-based European guidelines for chronic pancreatitis (HaPanEU) in 2017 and was in charge of the UEG guidelines for IgG4-related diseases. He is a founding member of the IgG4ward Foundation. Löhr has published 400 peer-reviewed papers in all major journals including Nature, Nature Reviews, The Lancet, Gastroenterology, GUT. As the current president of the UEG, his major goal is to broaden the participation of European countries and beyond Europe in UEG.
