Jan Lundberg

Jan Lundberg, Vice President, Head of Global Discovery Research, AstraZeneca

Professor Lundberg is the Executive Vice President, Head of Global Discovery Research at AstraZeneca. He has a medical education from the University of Gothenburg and was a professor at the Department of Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm before joining Astra AB. He was then Head of Preclinical Affairs at Astra AB, and after the Astra-Zeneca merger in 1999 he became Senior Vice President, Head of Global Discovery. He was appointed Executive Vice President in July 2002, and became a member of the Senior Executive Team.

He has published more than 500 original papers in international journals and is among the Top cited authors.

Professor Lundberg has been a member of the Swedish Medical Research Council and also of the Advisory Board for Drug Approvals at the Swedish Medical Product Agency. He is also Honorary Doctor of Pharmacy at Uppsala University.

As AstraZeneca’s Head of Discovery Research, Professor Lundberg has overall accountability for all global Discovery efforts including AstraZeneca’s research facilities in Bangalore India and the AstraZeneca Innovation Center China.  

In India, AstraZeneca has made a major commitment to develop a cure for the deadly disease TB that infects and kills millions of people each year mostly in the developing economies. More than 90 scientists, recruited from leading research institutions and universities, work at the Center, in close collaboration with AstraZeneca’s infection research team in Boston as well as with external academic leaders in the field. Its programs include the first major effort in 40 years to find new cures for TB and so far AstraZeneca has invested more than $40 million in this facility.

In China, AstraZeneca recently named Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park as the initial base for its new Innovation Centre China (ICC).   The ICC, announced in May 2006 as part of a larger $100 million R&D investment package, is the primary focus of AstraZeneca’s latest investment in China.  The Center will initially concentrate on cancer research through the development of knowledge about Chinese patients, biomarkers and genetics.