PHILADELPHIA— Kiran Musunuru, MD, PhD, MPH, an associate professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Genetics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been appointed editor in chief of Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics. Musunuru will assume his new role on January 1, 2018, at which time the journal will become known as Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine.
“I am deeply honored to have been chosen for this position,” said Musunuru, whose research focuses on the genetics of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. “I want to build on the outstanding work of my immediate predecessor, Dr. Ramachandran S. Vasan. The journal’s new name reflects the enormous progress being made in genomic and precision medicine at places such as Penn, and its potential to improve cardiovascular health.”
In his research, Musunuru works to understand how human genetic variation insulates some people from cardiovascular and metabolic disease and predisposes others, and to use that knowledge to generate new preventions and treatments. His tools include genome-wide association studies and sequencing to identify DNA variants and genes associated with cardiovascular disease. Musunuru also researches the use of stem cells for regenerative medicine, and the use of gene editing as a long-term treatment for disease.
“My vision is that the journal will be an indispensable resource for investigators and practitioners of cardiovascular genetics, ‘omics,’ and precision medicine,” said Musunuru. Examples of omics include genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics (the study of the transcriptome—the entire set of RNA transcripts produced by the genome) and metabolomics or biomarkers. He added “it will provide a forum for investigators to communicate excellent science, educate practitioners on both the basic tenets and the latest advances, and help define precision medicine as it takes shape over the next five years.”
The journal, one of 12 American Heart Association scientific journals, publishes research articles on human cardiovascular genetics, genomics, and systems biology. Under its new name, Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine will be a monthly, online publication. In addition to Musunuru’s appointment, Benjamin F. Voight, PhD, an associate professor of genetics at Penn, will be joining Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine as an associate editor, while Tilo Grosser, MD, a research associate professor of pharmacology at Penn, will continue his work at the journal as an associate editor.
Musunuru received his medical degree from Weill Cornell Medical College, his PhD degree from The Rockefeller University, and his MPH degree from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Before joining Penn Medicine in 2016, Musunuru trained in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and cardiovascular medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, followed by postdoctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
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