Ultupharma AB was founded in 2015 by Biobo AB, researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and Micafun AB, with the goal to find new antibiotics in nature. The work is carried out at SLU by a group of researchers who have developed new methods to isolate microorganisms and to induce their production of antibiotic compounds, and methods to rapidly identify new antibiotics.

Related activities at SLU go back to 1996 with the MISTRA (The Swedish foundation for strategic environmental research) funded research project Microbial antagonism against fungi (MAaF), and similar research has been on-going at SLU during the last 20 years. Inspired by results from MAaF, Medivir AB, Bioagri AB and Micafun AB started Agrivir AB in 1998 to search for antifungal and antibacterial compounds in soil-microorganisms. Between 2012 and 2015 Medivir AB had a collaboration with the researchers at SLU to search for antibiotics in nature. All results, methods and isolates of microorganisms from these activities are today owned by Ultupharma AB.

Professor Johan Schnürer, Chairman. Vice Chancellor of Örebro University. Prof. Schnürer, with 30 years of research on microbial interactions and discovery of antibiotic metabolites, has supervised 13 PhD students and published more than 100 international publications. One of his patented inventions – the mould and yeast inhibitory lactic acid bacterium MiLAB 393– is now sold by DeLaval in 20 countries on three continents.

Professor Anders Broberg. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Prof. Broberg has worked in the field of natural products chemistry since 1993 and has published numerous new secondary metabolites from microorganisms and plants as well as studies of biosynthesis of secondary metabolites and method oriented articles based on LCMS and NMR.

Dr.  Nina Lindblom. Head clinical and business development at Curovir AB. Dr. Lindblom has a background in neuropsychopharmacology and holds a Ph.D. in Medical Sciences from Karolinska Institutet. She has more than 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry working with drug development at small pharmaceutical companies and at clinical research organizations.

Professor Bo Öberg. Associated to the Faculty of Pharmacy at Uppsala University.  Prof. Öberg has a background in biochemistry and virology and 200 publications as well as more than 40 years of experience in drug development, resulting in three new drugs brought to the market. He received the 11th Elion Award for outstanding research in the field of antiviral research. Prof. Öberg has been head of antiviral research and development of Astra AB, founded Medivir AB in 1988 and has been CEO of Ultupharma since 2015.

Professor Bo Öberg