Sekar Kathiresan is a

physician-scientist A physician-scientist (in North American English) or clinician-scientist (in British English and Australian English) is a physician who divides their professional time between direct clinical practice with patients and scientific research. Physicia ...

and human geneticist, currently serving as a

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

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 ...

. His research is focused on understanding the genetic risk factors of

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...

and

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 phospholipid capsule, and the type of protein embedded in this outer shell determines the fate of the particle and its ...

to improve cardiac care. His research has led to notable discoveries of genetic mutations which confer resistance to

cardiovascular diseases Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is any disease involving the heart or blood vessels. CVDs constitute a class of diseases that includes: coronary artery diseases (e.g. angina, heart attack), heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, rheuma ...

, including the discovery of protective mutations in the ''

ANGPTL3 Angiopoietin-like 3, also known as ANGPTL3, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''ANGPTL3'' gene. Function The protein encoded by this gene is a member of the angiopoietin-like family of secreted factors. It is expressed predominant ...

'' gene. Prior to joining Verve in July 2019, he served as director of the

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvar ...

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, United States. The institu ...

and was a

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

of Medicine at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...

. In 2023, Verve established a global collaboration with

Eli Lilly Eli Lilly (July 8, 1838 – June 6, 1898) was a Union Army officer, pharmacist, chemist, and businessman who founded Eli Lilly and Company. Lilly enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War and recruited a company of men to ...

for advancing programs in cardiovascular disease, and the pharmaceutical giant neared a $1.3 billion deal to buy Verve in 2025 as they sought to expand their experimental medicines pipeline.

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 partic ...

, 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 Sout ...

'' from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

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, ...

in 1988.

Research

Kathiresan has helped highlight new biological mechanisms underlying heart attack, discovered mutations that protect against heart attack risk, highlighted triglyceride-rich

lipoproteins A lipoprotein is a biochemical assembly whose primary function is to transport hydrophobic lipid (also known as fat) molecules in water, as in blood plasma or other extracellular fluids. They consist of a triglyceride and cholesterol center, sur ...

as a therapeutic target, and developed a framework to interpret the genome for heart attack risk which includes monogenic, somatic, and

polygenic A polygene is a member of a group of non- epistatic genes that interact additively to influence a phenotypic trait, thus contributing to multiple-gene inheritance (polygenic inheritance, multigenic inheritance, quantitative inheritance), a type ...

drivers of disease risk. His work has also challenged the assumption that high levels of

HDL cholesterol High-density lipoprotein (HDL) is one of the five major groups of lipoproteins. Lipoproteins are complex particles composed of multiple proteins which transport all fat molecules (lipids) around the body within the water outside cells. They are t ...

, often referred to as "good cholesterol," are protective against heart attacks. His clinical focus is the prevention of myocardial infarction in individuals with a family history of heart attack. 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 o ...

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 success indicators such as winning t ...

of 138 according to

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

Awards

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

Curt Stern Award The ASHG Scientific Achievement Award was established in 2001 and is presented annually by the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) for outstanding scientific achievements in human genetics that have occurred in the last 10 years. The award w ...

: 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