Cardiovascular genetics research at the University of Pennsylvania
We study the genetic basis of cardiovascular disease using large-scale biobanks and electronic health records.
Our research characterizes how common and rare genetic variation shapes susceptibility to cardiovascular diseases. We use these discoveries to identify therapeutic targets, develop genetic risk prediction tools, and conduct mechanistic clinical studies to validate findings in humans.
We work with the Million Veteran Program, Penn Medicine Biobank, and other population-scale cohorts using computational genetics, epidemiologic methods, and clinical/translational approaches.
Selected Publications
Sharma P, Judy R, Yuan S, Gellatly C, Saxby KL, Rader DJ, Bown MJ, Levin MG, Damrauer SM. Lipoprotein(a) Is Associated With Increased Risk of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm. JACC: Basic to Translational Science. 2026;11(2):101457. doi:10.1016/j.jacbts.2025.101457.
Levin MG, Koyama S, Woerner J, Zhang DY, Rodriguez A, Nandi T, Truong B, Abramowitz SA, Gupta H, Kamineni H, Hornsby W, Li Z, Cohron T, Huffman JE, Ellinor P, Kim D, Liao KP, Madduri RK, Voight BF, Verma A, Damrauer SM, Natarajan P. Genome-Wide Assessment of Pleiotropy Across >1000 Traits from Global Biobanks. 2025. doi:10.1101/2025.04.18.25326074
Lee DSM, Cardone KM, Zhang DY, Tsao NL, Abramowitz S, Sharma P, DePaolo JS, Conery M, Aragam KG, Biddinger K, Dilitikas O, Hoffman-Andrews L, Judy RL, Khan A, Kullo IJ, Puckelwartz MJ, Reza N, Satterfield BA, Singhal P, Arany Z, Cappola TP, Carruth ED, Day SM, Do R, Haggerty CM, Joseph J, McNally EM, Nadkarni G, Owens AT, Rader DJ, Ritchie MD, Sun YV, Voight BF, Levin MG, Damrauer SM. Common-variant and rare-variant genetic architecture of heart failure across the allele-frequency spectrum. Nature Genetics. 2025:1-10. doi:10.1038/s41588-025-02140-2.
Tsao NL, Abramowitz SA, Shakt GE, Judy R, Hilliard AT, Biobank PM, Damrauer SM, Assimes TL, Clarke SL, Tcheandjieu C, Levin M. Angiographic Burden of Coronary Atherosclerosis Contributes To Adverse ASCVD Outcomes Independent Of Traditional Risk Factors. 2025. doi:10.1101/2025.04.06.25325252
Khodursky S, Yuan S, Spin JM, Tsao PS, Levin MG, Damrauer SM. Plasma proteome-wide Mendelian randomization reveals the association of extracellular matrix proteins with abdominal aortic aneurysm. JVS-Vascular Science. 2025;6:100290. doi:10.1016/j.jvssci.2025.100290.
Last updated: January 28, 2026