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
Cho SMJ, Levin M, Chen R, Samarakoon R, Judy R, Hartmann K, Postupaka D, Viscosi V, Farber-Eger E, Fahed AC, Honigberg MC, Patel CJ, Hornsby W, Wells QS, Damrauer SM, Do R, Natarajan P. AHA PREVENT Equations and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Diverse Health Care Populations. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2025;86(3):181-192. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2025.04.066.
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. doi:10.1101/2025.04.06.25325252
Abramowitz SA, Boulier K, Keat K, Cardone KM, Shivakumar M, DePaolo J, Judy R, Bermudez F, Mimouni N, Neylan C, Kim D, Rader DJ, Ritchie MD, Voight BF, Pasaniuc B, Levin MG, Damrauer SM, Penn Medicine BioBank. Evaluating Performance and Agreement of Coronary Heart Disease Polygenic Risk Scores. JAMA. 2025;333(1):60-70. doi:10.1001/jama.2024.23784.
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.
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. doi:10.1101/2025.04.18.25326074
Last updated: October 21, 2025