Q&A with Dr. Noor Momin: Personalized Medicine for Atrial Fibrillation

During her childhood, Noor Momin was convinced she would be a doctor, just like her parents. But when she got to college, she realized her true passion was exploring the body at a more microscopic level. She wants to make discoveries and create new health care interventions that improve people’s lives.

Now an assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, Momin received a PhRMA Foundation 2025 Faculty Starter Grant in Drug Discovery for her research investigating the role of the immune system in atrial fibrillation (AFib), an irregular heartbeat condition that affects nearly 1 in 10 elderly people. Current treatments for AFib focus on preventing complications like stroke and don’t address the condition’s underlying cause.

AFib occurs when the heart tissue becomes scarred, which happens when cells in the heart produce a harmful protein. Momin has designed a combination therapy that reverses this scarring. The treatment combines small interfering RNA (siRNA) that stops production of the harmful protein with an antibody that ensures the drug reaches the target cells.

Momin’s lab has confirmed that the treatment alleviates AFib in a clinically relevant mouse model and is now testing in human cells to optimize the therapy for human use, thus enabling rapid clinical translation.

Watch this video to learn more about Momin and her research.