Dr. Sekar Kathiresan is co-founder and chief executive officer at Verve Therapeutics. He has focused his career on understanding the inherited basis for heart attack and leveraging those insights to improve the care of cardiovascular disease. Based on his groundbreaking discoveries in human genetic mutations that confer resistance to cardiovascular disease, Sek co-founded Verve Therapeutics with a vision to create a pipeline of single-course, gene editing therapies aimed at addressing the root causes of this highly prevalent and life-threatening disease. 

Prior to Verve, Sek served in a variety of roles including director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Genomic Medicine, director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad Institute, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. At Harvard Sek’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 highest scientific honor – a Distinguished Scientist Award – and by the American Society of Human Genetics with the 2018 Curt Stern Award. 

Sek holds a B.A. in History from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology at MGH and postdoctoral research training in human genetics at the Framingham Heart Study and the Broad Institute.