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
Ahmad FS, Khan SS, Levin MG. Implementation Intelligence With AI—Prospective Evaluations Needed. JAMA Cardiology. 2025. doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2025.4668
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
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
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.
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.
Last updated: December 18, 2025