Sekar Kathiresan

Sekar Kathiresan, M.D. is a physician-geneticist who is co-founder and chief executive officer of Verve Therapeutics. He is also a member of the company’s board of directors. Verve is developing therapies to safely edit the adult genome and confer lifelong protection from cardiovascular disease.

Kathiresan is a preventive cardiologist who has made groundbreaking discoveries of cardioprotective genetic mutations, which confer resistance to cardiovascular disease.[1] Prior to joining Verve in July 2019, he served as director of the Massachusetts General Hospital 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 and was a Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School.

Kathiresan’s research laboratory focused on understanding the inherited basis for blood lipids and myocardial infarction 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. As of July 9, 2019, he has over 94,000 citations and a h-index of 115 on Google Scholar.[2]

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. In tandem with his research, his clinical focus is the primary prevention of myocardial infarction in individuals with a family history of heart attack.

Education

Kathiresan attended North Allegheny schools and graduated valedictorian of North Allegheny High School in 1988. He received his B.A. in history and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School 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 Framingham Heart Study and the Broad Institute. In 2008, he joined the faculty of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cardiology Division, Cardiovascular Research Center, and Center for Genomic Medicine.

Awards
  • 2018 Joseph A. Vita Award: American Heart Association[3]
  • 2018 Curt Stern Award: American Society of Human Genetics[4]
  • 2017 Distinguished Scientist: American Heart Association[5]
  • 2013 Ofer and Shelley Nemirovsky MGH Research Scholar[6]
  • 2011 ASCI Member[7]
  • 2006 Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development Award[8]

Personal

Kathiresan was born in Tirupattur, Tamil Nadu, India and immigrated to the United States in 1980, settling in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He lives with his spouse Neela Pal and three children - Nina, Nikhil, and Devan - in Newton, Massachusetts, USA.

References
  1. "About Sekar - Kathiresan Lab". Kathiresan Lab. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
  2. "Sekar Kathiresan - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
  3. https://www.newmediawire.com/news/harvard-scientist-gets-american-heart-association-award-for-findings-of-inherited-basis-for-cardiovascular-disorders-4824277
  4. http://www.ashg.org/press/201807-Curt-Stern-Award.shtml
  5. "2017 Distinguished Scientist - Sekar Kathiresan, MD, FAHA". professional.heart.org. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
  6. "2013 MGH Research Scholars - Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA". www.massgeneral.org. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
  7. "USNews - Doctors".
  8. "Sekar Kathiresan receives prestigious award to pursue genetic causes of heart disease". Broad Institute. 2006-01-03. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
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