Sekar Kathiresan, MD, Co-founder and CEO, Verve Therapeutics, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School (on leave)

Overview

For common diseases of complex etiology such as myocardial infarction, gene discovery studies have implicated causative genes and validated drug targets. Recently, enthusiasm is growing for front-line applications of common disease genomics for clinical practice and therapeutics development. For instance, polygenic risk scores (PRS) offer the potential to stratify disease susceptibility for broad populations at birth, but strategies for clinical use are under active debate. Furthermore, newer therapeutic modalities such as RNAi or genome editing raise the prospect of more rapid translation of genomic insights into therapies.

Dr. Sek Kathiresan, CEO of Verve Therapeutics and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (on leave), is a world-renowned pioneer in the genomics of cardiovascular disease. In this webinar, he shares his insights on the practical, real-world translation of genomics for clinical practice and novel therapeutics development.

About the Presenter

Sekar Kathiresan is co-founder and chief executive officer of Verve Therapeutics. He is also a member of the company’s board of directors. Dr. Kathiresan is a preventive cardiologist who has made groundbreaking discoveries of cardioprotective genetic mutations, which confer resistance to cardiovascular disease. Prior to joining Verve, he served as director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) 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 professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kathiresan graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology at MGH and his postdoctoral research training in human genetics at the Framingham Heart Study and the Broad Institute.

Dr. Sek Kathiresan also leads our "Accelerating Biotech and Pharmaceutical R&D through Genomics" program, offered June 2-3, 2020.