Anna Rostedt Punga

Anna Rostedt Punga is Professor at Uppsala University's Department of Medical Sciences within the Faculty of Medicine, specializing in Clinical Neurophysiology. She combines her academic role with clinical work as Senior Physician at Academic Hospital. Her research centers on neurophysiology with a focus on nerve-muscle signaling disorders, particularly Myasthenia Gravis (MG), which causes increased muscle fatigue.

Her educational background includes medical studies with research focus at Uppsala University's Faculty of Medicine, where she began MG research in 1999. She completed a doctorate in 2007 at the Department of Neuroscience, followed by postdoctoral training in Basel, Switzerland (2009-2010) focusing on animal models of MG.

Rostedt Punga's research explores biomarkers for MG, especially microRNAs, and has pioneered a unique model where nerve and muscle cells are grown on electronic chips to track detailed nerve-muscle signaling processes. Her work aims to improve diagnostic and monitoring tools for MG, both in vivo and in vitro, while developing new treatment approaches. She has secured multiple external grants, including two from the Swedish Research Council.

Recent publications reveal a strong focus on biomarker discovery for MG diagnosis and monitoring, exploration of autoimmune mechanisms, clinical studies on treatment efficacy, and patient outcomes research. Her work increasingly integrates digital health applications and molecular diagnostics.

• Eberhardt Pfleiderer Prize from the German Myasthenia Gravis Foundation
• Göran Gustafsson's major prize in medicine for young researchers

Rostedt Punga has supervised 4 doctoral students as main supervisor and 1 as co-supervisor. In 2014, she founded her own research group after securing a highly competitive clinical researcher position from the Swedish Research Council (8% acceptance rate). Her team has been pioneering in microRNA biomarker research for MG and leads multiple clinical studies focused on improving patient care and understanding disease mechanisms.

Her laboratory work includes innovative approaches to studying neuromuscular signaling, particularly the development of electronic chip models for nerve-muscle interaction analysis. This research aims to provide deeper insights into MG pathophysiology and accelerate drug development for this autoimmune disorder.