The founder of a biotechnology company will describe efforts to transform medicine's approach to cardiovascular disease. Sekar Kathiresan, MD, will speak on “From Reading the Genome for Risk to Rewriting It for Cardiovascular Health” at a plenary on Friday, October 25.
Dr. Kathiresan is cofounder and chief executive officer of Verve Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new approach to the care of cardiovascular disease, with the hope of transforming treatment from chronic management to single-course gene-editing medicines.
Dr. Kathiresan is a cardiologist and scientist who has focused his career on understanding the inherited basis for heart attacks and leveraging those insights to improve the care of cardiovascular disease. In the past decade, genetics research has shown that naturally occurring gene variants can dramatically lower some individuals’ lifetime risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Based on his groundbreaking discoveries of these genetic mutations that confer resistance to cardiovascular disease, Dr. Kathiresan cofounded Verve Therapeutics with a vision of mimicking the mutations by inactivating specific genes to lower blood lipids through a single course of gene-editing therapy to address the root causes of this disease. Verve is advancing initial programs that target PCSK9 and ANGPTL3—genes that have been extensively validated by Dr. Kathiresan and others as targets for lowering blood lipids, such as low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, which is a major driver of cardiovascular disease.
Prior to joining Verve, Dr. Kathiresan's roles included serving as director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Genomic Medicine, director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad Institute, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
At Harvard, Dr. Kathiresan's research laboratory focused on understanding the inherited basis for blood lipids and myocardial infarction. His research contributions have been recognized by the American Heart Association with its Distinguished Scientist Award and by the American Society of Human Genetics with the Curt Stern Award.
Dr. Kathiresan received an MD from Harvard Medical School. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and his postdoctoral research training in human genetics at the Framingham Heart Study and the Broad Institute.