Peter Fecci, MD, PhD has accepted the position of chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at University of Colorado School of Medicine and will leave Duke at the end of June. Under Dr. Fecci’s leadership as center director, the Duke Center for Brain and Spine Metastasis (DCBSM) has been one of the fastest-growing clinical programs at Duke. With Fecci’s departure, Carey Anders, MD, will be stepping into the role of director of the DCBSM. Anders is currently the center’s co-director.

Therapies that unleash the immune system to fight tumors have greatly extended the lives of people with many types of cancer. But there are reports that patients with melanoma and lung cancer whose disease has spread to the brain may experience serious inflammatory reactions after receiving immunotherapy drugs concurrently with radiation. In a study appearing April 9 in JAMA Network Open, researchers at the Duke Center for Brain and Spine Metastasis report a nearly two-fold increase in the risk of symptomatic brain inflammation, termed radiation necrosis, among patients with brain metastases receiving the immunotherapies within four weeks of a form of targeted radiation therapy called radiosurgery.

Brian Sindelar, MD, has joined the Duke Neurosurgery faculty as a member of the neurosurgery team at Duke Raleigh Hospital.

At Duke, she aims to advance translational neuroengineering and interdisciplinary collaborations to develop novel therapies for neurological and psychiatric disorders.