Katherine Cahill, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and serves as the Medical Director of Clinical Asthma Research in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
She received her baccalaureate degree in biology from Pepperdine University, Malibu, California, and her MD degree from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She completed her residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and her fellowship training at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, all in Boston. She is board certified in Internal Medicine and Allergy and Immunology.
Dr. Cahill's research interests are focused on the mechanisms of adult asthma with a primary interest in severe asthma phenotypes including aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease (AERD) and obesity-associated asthma. She has published seminal work on the development of new therapies, including the use of tyrosine kinase inhibitors in severe asthma, and is pioneering work on the clinical benefit and anti-inflammatory effects of GLP-1R agonist therapies such as liraglutide and semaglutide in respiratory disease.
Through her research efforts, Dr. Cahill provides patients in middle Tennessee and surrounding areas with access to national clinical research studies supported by the National Institutes of Health and the American Lung Association. In 2021, she was recognized by the American Thoracic Society with the Jo Rae Wright Award for her contribution to science. Dr. Cahill is a fellow of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology and a member of the American Thoracic Society. She has given lectures nationally and international throughout her career and published her findings in well-recognized journals in the allergy, pulmonology and immunology fields.
Dr. Cahill sees patients at the Vanderbilt Asthma, Sinus and Allergy Program. Her clinical interests include the evaluation and management of severe asthma, adult-onset asthma, aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease (AERD), NSAID drug allergy, chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps and eosinophilic diseases.