Meagan is a Group Leader within the Metabolism, Diabetes and Obesity Program at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (Monash University),  and within the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Monash University. 

Dr Meagan McGrath leads research focused on skeletal muscle biology, broadly spanning from inherited skeletal muscle disorders called muscular dystrophies and myopathies to muscle metabolism.

Dr McGrath heads the Skeletal Muscle Biology, Autophagy and Lysosome Group at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute. She has a strong focus on closing the clinical gap for these often untreatable, severe disorders through comprehensive interrogation of disease mechanisms by combining cell biology approaches with advanced microscopy, mouse models and multiomics. Her research further leverages advanced technology platforms at Monash University including the world-class Monash Metabolic Phenotyping Platform, Monash MicroImaging and the Monash Ramaciotti Centre for Cryo-Electron Microscopy.

She has also developed a pipeline to identify autophagy and lysosome defects in patient-derived iPSCs. Dr McGrath is co-founder of ADAPT-CMD, a national clinical and research partnership funded by the Medical Research Futures Fund, aimed at developing a functional genetics platform for advancing personalized treatment of congenital muscle disease – leading the autophagy pipeline of this platform.  

Dr McGrath is a leading expert on the FHL family of LIM proteins, including the collaborative identification of FHL1 mutations in patients with Reducing Body Myopathy, solving a 40-year enigma as to cause of this fatal disease. This seminal discovery paved the way to the identification of a further 6 muscle diseases caused by FHL1 mutations (collectively termed "FHL1 myopathies"). Her group focuses on identifying the underlying pathomechanisms and treatments.  

Dr McGrath also has a strong research interest in autophagic lysosome reformation (ALR), an unusual membrane recycling process required to maintain lysosome homeostasis. She has led the field in pioneering discoveries, including the role of ALR in skeletal muscle health, and most recently in metabolism and obesity resistance. Developing bespoke cell fixation techniques to preserve the fragile membranes involved in this process, she leverages this innovation for efficient screening of effectors involved in ALR, to identify the molecular roadmap controlling this process and further define its physiological role, through funding from the Australian Research Council. A further focus is to explore the underappreciated role of lysosomes as a metabolic hub for nutrient processing and sensing, with a particular interest in skeletal muscle.