Patrick McGann, PhD

Deputy Director

Patrick Mc Gann, PhD is the Deputy Director of the Multidrug resistant organism Repository & Surveillance Network (MRSN) at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). Dr. Mc Gann graduated from the National University of Ireland, Galway with a BSc. and Ph.D in Microbiology in 1994 and 2004, respectively.

Prior to this current position, Dr. Mc Gann served as a Post-Doctoral associate at the laboratory of Prof. Martin Wiedmann at Cornell University where he studied the contribution of the Internalin proteins to the invasive properties of the important food-borne pathogen, Listeria monocyotogenes. In 2006, Dr. Mc Gann competed for and was awarded a National Research Council (NRC) Fellowship to study at the Department of Bacterial & Rickettsial Diseases located at the WRAIR. Dr. Mc Gann enrolled in the Biosurety Safety program and studied potential vaccines for the Biosafety Level (BSL) 3 Biothreat agents Francisella tularensis and Burkholderia mallei.

In 2010, Dr. Mc Gann joined the nascent MRSN at the WRAIR as Senior Microbiologist. The MRSN is the sole entity within the U.S. Department of Defense engaged in real-time surveillance of multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria and outbreak investigation assistance across the entire Military Health System (MHS). During his tenure at the MRSN, Dr. Mc Gann has overseen the expansion of the MRSN molecular laboratory to a high-throughout sequencing core that uses long and short-read sequencing technologies to track the emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria throughout the MHS. In 2016, the MRSN was responsible for the first detection of the mobile colistin resistance gene mcr-1 in the USA, resulting in extensive media coverage of the WRAIR and MRSN. In 2019, Dr. Mc Gann was appointed to the role of Deputy Director for the MRSN, where he currently resides.

Dr. Mc Gann’s research interests include antimicrobial resistance, hospital-acquired infections, bacterial epidemiology, and the application of Next-generation sequencing technologies to aid in outbreak investigations. He is a member of the American Society of Microbiology (since 2010) and the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (since 2021). He serves as a peer-reviewer for many scientific journals, and is the author or co-author of more than 90 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He is the recipient of the Army Achievement Medal (2019) and the Commanders Award for Civilian Service medal (2021).
 
Select publications:
Russo TA, Lebreton F, McGann PT. A Step Forward in Hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae Diagnostics. Emerg Infect Dis. 2025 Jan;31(1):1-3. PMID: 39714290

Galac MR, Snesrud E, Lebreton F, Stam J, Julius M, Ong AC, Maybank R, Jones AR, Kwak YI, Hinkle K, Waterman PE, Lesho EP, Bennett JW, Mc Gann P. A Diverse Panel of Clinical Acinetobacter baumannii for Research and Development. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2020 Sep 21;64(10):e00840-20. PMID: 32718956.

McGann P, Snesrud E, Maybank R, Corey B, Ong AC, Clifford R, Hinkle M, Whitman T, Lesho E, Schaecher KE. Escherichia coli Harboring mcr-1 and blaCTX-M on a Novel IncF Plasmid: First Report of mcr-1 in the United States. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2016 Jun 20;60(7):4420-1. PMID: 27230792.
 
Complete List of Published Work:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/patrick.mc%20gann.1/bibliography/public/