Elizabeth McNally, M.D., Ph.D.

Elizabeth McNally can trace her interest in science to junior high school. She received dual bachelor of arts degrees in Biology and Philosophy from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1983, and graduated cum laude, with honors in Biology. She spent the summer between her junior and senior years as a summer student in the lab of Leslie Leinwand at Albert Einstein, and enjoyed it so much that she decided to join the M.D.-Ph.D. program (MSTP) and continue her work with Dr. Leinwand in the department of microbiology and immunology, mapping functional domains in myosin. She did a residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She was a research fellow in the Howard Hughes Institute at Children’s Hospital, working on the genetics of muscular dystrophy in Louis Kunkel’s lab. In 1996 she joined the faculty at the University of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences and Pritzker School of Medicine, where she is now a Professor with tenure in the Departments of Medicine and Human Genetics. She is the director of the University’s Institute for Cardiovascular Research.

Dr. McNally’s research has focused on the genetics of heart and muscle diseases. Her laboratory studies the cellular mechanisms by which genetic mutations lead to cardiomyopathy, cardiac arrhythmias, and vascular spasm. Her research focuses on the dystrophin glycoprotein complex, which is involved in muscular dystrophies, and includes sarcoglycans, which help stabilize the plasma membrane of both cardiac and skeletal muscle. McNally’s lab has discovered a number of genetic regions involved in familial cardiomyopathy that are involved in normal electrical conduction in the heart. They have also uncovered genetic associations between cardiomyopathy and muscular dystrophy through the study of sarcoglycans, and have generated data with animal models showing that exercising the muscles in muscular dystrophy may actually help treat the disease. In her own laboratory, Dr. McNally has mentored several Ph.D. and M.D.-Ph.D. students for their theses. It is this aspect of directing a laboratory that Dr. McNally most enjoys.

Dr. McNally has published over 80 scientific papers and book chapters. She has received a number of awards and honors including membership in Alpha Omega Alpha upon graduating medical school, a Charles E. Culpeper Medical Scholar Award, an American Heart Association Established Investigator Award and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Translation Award. She is a member of the American Heart Association, American Society of Clinical Investigation, and the Association of University Cardiologists.