Alekhya Parvathaneni

Program: Molecular Genetics and Genomics

Current advisor: Kory J. Lavine, MD, PhD

Undergraduate university: Santa Clara University, 2020

Enrollment year: 2022

Research summary
Underlying immune mechanisms of heart failure and cardiomyopathies

IL-1B has been implicated in macrophage-fibroblast crosstalk, and is linked to changes in differentiation trajectory, gene regulatory networks, etc. towards a fibroblast phenotype that is pro-fibrotic. My project seeks to understand the role that IL-1B plays in monocyte fate specification and the differentiation of macrophages into different cell states in the heart.

Graduate publications
Penna VR, Amrute JM, Engel M, Shiel EA, Farra W, Cannon EN, Leu-Turner C, Ma P, Villanueva A, Shin H, Parvathaneni A, Jager J, Bueno-Beti C, Asimaki A, Lavine KJ, Saffitz JE, Chelko SP. 2026 Interleukin-1β Drives Disease Progression in Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy. JACC Basic Transl Sci, 11(6):101542. PMCID: PMC13158593

Owen MC, Li DY, Shin H, Gu W, Parvathaneni A, Kadyrov FF, Wang X, Sticco-Ivins M, Bonnici G, Nelson SL, Dun H, Hyacinth S, Giangrasso SC, Chou C, Lin CY, Cain MT, Pedroza A, Dalal A, Sallam K, Boyd J, Woo J, Amrute JM, Cheng P, Lavine KJ, Kopecky BJ. 2026 Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics identify immune-stromal interactions in cardiac allograft vasculopathy. Nat Cardiovasc Res, 5(5):439-455. PMCID:

Amrute JM, Luo X, Penna V, Yang S, Yamawaki T, Hayat S, Bredemeyer A, Jung IH, Kadyrov FF, Heo GS, Venkatesan R, Shi SY, Parvathaneni A, Koenig AL, Kuppe C, Baker C, Luehmann H, Jones C, Kopecky B, Zeng X, Bleckwehl T, Ma P, Lee P, Terada Y, Fu A, Furtado M, Kreisel D, Kovacs A, Stitziel NO, Jackson S, Li CM, Liu Y, Rosenthal NA, Kramann R, Ason B, Lavine KJ. 2024 Targeting immune-fibroblast cell communication in heart failure. Nature, 635(8038):423-433. PMCID: PMC12334188

Kadyrov FF, Koenig AL, Amrute JM, Dun H, Li W, Weinheimer CJ, Nigro JM, Kovacs A, Bredemeyer AL, Yang S, Das S, Penna VR, Parvathaneni A, Lai L, Hartmann N, Kopecky BJ, Kreisel D, Lavine KJ. 2024 Hypoxia sensing in resident cardiac macrophages regulates monocyte fate specification following ischemic heart injury. Nat Cardiovasc Res, 3(11):1337-1355. PMCID: