April 4, 2013

Harvard’s Kathiresan set for Wilkinson Lecture

Sekar Kathiresan, M.D., director of Preventive Cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, will deliver the ninth annual Grant R. Wilkinson Distinguished Lecture in Clinical Pharmacology on Thursday, April 11.

Sekar Kathiresan, M.D., director of Preventive Cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, will deliver the ninth annual Grant R. Wilkinson Distinguished Lecture in Clinical Pharmacology on Thursday, April 11.

Kathiresan’s lecture, entitled “Leveraging Human Genetics to Guide Drug Discovery,” will begin at 8 a.m. in 208 Light Hall.

Sekar Kathiresan, M.D.

An associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Kathiresan also is an associate member of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

Kathiresan and his collaborators have made major contributions to understanding the genetic contributions to blood lipid levels and myocardial infarction (heart attack).

  • They have identified numerous gene regions associated with heart attack risk, and Kathiresan has identified a panel of genetic variations that can be used to predict future risk for cardiovascular disease.

Kathiresan received his M.D. from Harvard in 1997 and completed clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He has pursued research training in cardiovascular genetics through the Framingham Heart Study and the Broad Institute.

The endowed Wilkinson lectureship was established in 2005 to honor Vanderbilt clinical pharmacologist and professor of Pharmacology, emeritus, Grant Wilkinson, Ph.D., D.Sc., who died in 2006.

Kathiresan’s lecture is sponsored by the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, the Department of Pharmacology and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.