Sekar Kathiresan is

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

and co-founder of

Verve Therapeutics VERVE-101 and VERVE-102 are an experimental gene therapy developed by Verve Therapeutics that targets the PCSK9 gene and is intended to reduce blood cholesterol levels. It works on the same protein as the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as PCSK9 ...

. Verve is pioneering a new approach to the care of cardiovascular disease by developing single-course gene-editing therapies that safely and durably lower plasma

LDL cholesterol Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) is one of the five major groups of lipoprotein that transport all fat molecules around the body in extracellular water. These groups, from least dense to most dense, are chylomicrons (aka ULDL by the overall densit ...

in order to treat

atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease Coronary artery disease (CAD), also called coronary heart disease (CHD), ischemic heart disease (IHD), myocardial ischemia, or simply heart disease, involves the reduction of blood flow to the heart muscle due to build-up of atherosclerotic pla ...

. Kathiresan is a

cardiologist Cardiology () is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular hear ...

and a

geneticist A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic processe ...

who has helped define the inherited basis for heart attack risk and made groundbreaking discoveries of genetic mutations which confer resistance to cardiovascular disease. Prior to joining Verve in July 2019, he served as director of the

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...

Center for Genomic Medicine and was the Ofer and Shelly Nemirovsky MGH Research Scholar. He also served as director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the

Broad Institute The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (IPA: , pronunciation respelling: ), often referred to as the Broad Institute, is a biomedical and genomic research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U ...

and was a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of Medicine at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

. Kathiresan’s research laboratory focused on understanding the inherited basis for

blood lipids Blood lipids (or blood fats) are lipids in the blood, either free or bound to other molecules. They are mostly transported in a protein capsule, and the density of the lipids and type of protein determines the fate of the particle and its influence ...

and

myocardial infarction A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may ...

and using these insights to improve preventive cardiac care. Among his scientific contributions, Kathiresan has helped highlight new biological mechanisms underlying heart attack, discovered mutations that protect against heart attack risk, highlighted triglyceride-rich lipoproteins as a therapeutic target, and developed a framework to interpret the genome for heart attack risk which includes monogenic, somatic, and polygenic drivers of disease risk. He has over 152,000

citation A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...

s and a

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

of 138 according to

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

. For his research contributions, he has been honored with a Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Heart Association and the 2018 Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics. His clinical focus is the prevention of myocardial infarction in individuals with a family history of heart attack.

Education

He received his M.D. from

in 1997. He then completed his clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he served as chief resident in Internal Medicine from 2002 to 2003. Kathiresan pursued postdoctoral research training from 2003 to 2008 in cardiovascular genetics through a combined experience at the Broad Institute and the

Framingham Heart Study The Framingham Heart Study is a long-term, ongoing cardiovascular cohort study of residents of the city of Framingham, Massachusetts. The study began in 1948 with 5,209 adult subjects from Framingham, and is now on its third generation of participa ...

, jointly mentored by Drs. David Altshuler, Joel Hirschhorn, and Christopher J. O'Donnell. In 2008, he joined the faculty of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cardiology Division, Cardiovascular Research Center, and Center for Genomic Medicine. Prior to medical school, he received his B.A. in history with Honors and graduated ''

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

'' from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1992 and earlier, Kathiresan attended North Allegheny public schools in Pittsburgh and graduated valedictorian of

North Allegheny Senior High School North Allegheny Senior High School (NASH) is a suburban high school in the North Allegheny School District and is located in Wexford, Pennsylvania, a northern suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The current building was built in 1974. In 2013, e ...

in 1988.

Awards

* 2018 Joseph A. Vita Award: American Heart Association * 2018

Curt Stern Award The Curt Stern Award, also known as the Stern Award, honors the memory of Curt Stern (1902–1981) as an outstanding and pioneering human geneticist. Established in 2001, this award is presented annually by the American Society of Human Genetics (AS ...

: American Society of Human Genetics * 2017 Distinguished Scientist: American Heart Association * 2013 Ofer and Shelley Nemirovsky MGH Research Scholar * 2011 ASCI Member * 2006 Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development Award

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kathiresan, Sekar Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Pennsylvania alumni Harvard Medical School alumni American geneticists American cardiologists Harvard Medical School faculty American physicians of Indian descent