Pamela McShane, MD

Dr. McShane graduated cum laude from Loyola University Chicago with a bachelor of science in biology and earned her medical doctorate from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Prior to entering medical school, Dr. McShane accepted the U.S. Health Professions Scholarship. Upon completion of medical school, internal medicine residency training at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, Northwestern University, and one year of pulmonary critical care fellowship training at the University of Rochester, Dr. McShane commenced four years of active duty in the U.S. Air Force as a staff physician. During her active duty military time, Dr. McShane deployed twice to Iraq, (June 2004-September 2004 and November 2006-May 2007) where she served as a critical care physician in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Dr. McShane received two Meritorious Service Medals for outstanding achievement in the combat theater.

Following honorable discharge from military service, Dr. McShane returned to Chicago where she completed pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship training at the University of Chicago. From the beginning of her fellowship training, Dr. McShane developed a passion for caring for patients with bronchiectasis and nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) lung disease. By the end of fellowship training, Dr. McShane had developed a regional bronchiectasis clinical care center with a robust clinical database and soon published results on the effect of ethnicity on etiology and sputum culture of bronchiectasis patients. In 2013, Dr. McShane was awarded the Outstanding Clinical Service Award for junior faculty by the University of Chicago department of medicine.

From 2014 to 2015, she accepted an opportunity to worked with Dr. Kenneth Olivier at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. During her time at the NIH, Dr McShane worked on the natural history protocol for patients with bronchiectasis and pulmonary NTM disease. In 2015, Dr. McShane accepted a medical directorship of the intensive care unit at the Upper Peninsula Health System in Marquette, Michigan where she modernized intensive care delivery in a rural community. In the fall of 2016, Dr. McShane returned to her home at the University of Chicago where she worked in lung transplantation, a field that leveraged her critical care aptitude and bronchiectasis expertise. During the subsequent four years at the University of Chicago, Dr. McShane authored numerous manuscripts and research papers, elevated her regional bronchiectasis research registry to the national level by joining the U.S. Bronchiectasis and NTM Research Registry and worked with the Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD) Foundation to make the University of Chicago a PCD center of excellence.

In 2020, Dr. McShane accepted an invitation to further focus on NTM lung disease at the University of Texas Health Science Center Tyler (UTHSCT), in Tyler, TX, a nationally renowned acid-fast bacilli laboratory and national referral center for patients with NTM lung disease. At the UTHSCT, Dr. McShane built the center’s first biorepository of sputum and blood samples from bronchiectasis patients with and without NTM lung disease. She served as principal investigator for over twenty clinical trials in bronchiectasis and NTM lung disease, and she received the award for Excellence in Clinical Research from the UTHSCT Department of Medicine.

Dr. McShane served as associate editor for CHEST and the Journal of Clinical Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacteria. In addition, Dr. McShane served as chair of the U.S. National Bronchiectasis Research Registry Consortium from 2023 to 2024.

In August 2025, Dr. McShane returned to the NHLBI to continue her work in bronchiectasis and NTM lung disease.

Publications

Bronchiectasis in a diverse US population: effects of ethnicity on etiology and sputum culture

The Impact of Tobacco Smoking in Bronchiectasis: Data from the U.S. Bronchiectasis and Nontuberculous Mycobacteria Research Registry

Racial and ethnic differences in patients enrolled in the national bronchiectasis and nontuberculous mycobacteria research registry

Cathepsin C (dipeptidyl peptidase 1) inhibition in adults with bronchiectasis: AIRLEAF, a phase II randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-finding study

Phase 3 Trial of the DPP-1 Inhibitor Brensocatib in Bronchiectasis