Cormac McCarthy, M.D., Ph.D., FRCPI

Dr. Cormac McCarthy is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University College Dublin (UCD), Consultant Respiratory Physician at St. Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland and runs the Rare Lung Disease Referral Centre for Ireland. Dr. McCarthy is a clinician scientist with an interest in the pathogenesis of rare lung diseases and interstitial lung disease. He is a graduate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), with an Honors degree in Medicine. He completed higher specialist training through the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) and was awarded a Certificate of Satisfactory Completion of Specialist Training by the Irish Committee on Higher Specialist Training (Respiratory and General Internal Medicine). Dr. McCarthy completed a Ph.D. in Medicine at RCSI and continued post-graduate training at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where he completed an ACGME-accredited Clinical Fellowship in Genetic Pulmonary Disease and continued his training there as a Rare Lung Disease Scholar. While studying, his primary research areas were on the molecular mechanisms of lung disease, using the pathogenesis approach to develop new therapies. Dr. McCarthy has a strong interest in all lung diseases, with a focus on interstitial lung disease, rare lung diseases, and cystic lung disease syndromes. He focuses on the molecular pathogenesis of lung disease with an interest in glycobiology of plasma proteins, cholesterol homeostasis in macrophages, and lipidomics in the lung. His translational research has contributed to the understanding of the pathogenesis of pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP), development of novel therapeutic targets, and the epidemiology of this syndrome. Additionally, Dr. McCarthy’s research has highlighted the use of appropriate diagnostic tests for these rare diseases and investigated the use of novel radiological analyses to monitor disease progression. His current research is investigating the role of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) in macrophage lipid homeostasis in the pathogenesis of PAP and other interstitial lung disease and identifying novel therapeutic targets for this rare disease.