Prof. Cormac Gahan is a principal investigator in APC Microbiome Ireland (https://apc.ucc.ie/) and a faculty member of both the School of Microbiology and the School of Pharmacy at University College Cork. He has published 158 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in journals including PNAS, Microbiome, Gut, Cell Metabolism, Molecular Microbiology, Infection and Immunity, Vaccine and Journal of Bacteriology. His current h-index is 67 on Google Scholar with total career citations of 15,239.
Prof. Gahan’s research interests focus upon host-microbe signalling in the gut mediated via microbial bile acid metabolism (see Joyce et al., PNAS, 2014 – 283 citations; Jones et al., PNAS, 2008 – 467 citations; Begley et al., 2005 – 913 citations). Prof. Gahan also has a long history of research work on the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes (in collaboration with Prof. Colin Hill) resulting in a number of key papers in the area (for example see Corr et al., PNAS, 2007 – 527 citations). Recent work has also examined the use of live L. monocytogenes and L. lactis vectors as gene and protein delivery platforms for novel vaccination and therapeutic approaches. This work was carried out in collaboration with Prof. Mark Tangney at Cancer Research @UCC and Prof. Brendan Griffin in the School of Pharmacy & APC Microbiome Ireland, UCC.
In addition to his role as a PI in APC Microbiome Ireland he is funded by further grants from Science Foundation Ireland, the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine and the EU (H2020). He is currently on the Editorial Board of the journals Microbiome (IF 15.67) and Biology (IF 3.3) and was previously on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Microbiology & Letters in Applied Microbiology, Pathogens and Applied & Environmental Microbiology. He previously directed the SFI funded UREKA summer school programme entitled Microbe-Host Interactions that provided laboratory training for 84 undergraduate students from 2006-2011. He now leads the EU H2020-funded COL_RES Innovative Training Network (ITN) which explores the role of the gut microbiota in mediating colonization resistance against gut pathogens.