Peter Fecci, MD, PhD, grew up on Long Island, NY, graduated from Cornell University, and went on to medical school at Duke. In his second year of at Duke, he began the MD-PhD program and became John Sampson’s first graduate student. While in his PhD program, Peter was lead author on a number of papers, including one uncovering the role of regulatory T-cells dictating cellular immune defects in patients with GBM, now a landmark paper in the field. He completed his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and returned to Duke as assistant professor of neurosurgery in 2014.
In fall 2018, Peter’s work involving bone marrow T cell sequestration was published in Nature Medicine and led to a collaboration with Duke Nobel laureate Robert Lefkowitz to derive a new class of anti-cancer therapy. Also in that year Peter was named director of the newly formed Duke Center for Brain and Spine Metastasis, one of the keystones of Chancellor Eugene Washington’s Translating Duke Health initiative. The Center now represents the cancer initiative for the health care system.
Clinically, Peter focuses on intrinsic brain tumors, with an increasingly large part of his practice focusing on brain metastasis. Duke is now one of the highest volume centers in the U.S. for laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT), a minimally invasive surgical procedure that he mainly employs for recurrent tumors and radiation necrosis, a group of patients who otherwise lack good options.
Peter’s interests outside Duke include a deep appreciation for food and wine. He began studying wines as an undergraduate, and is now a Level 3 Sommelier and part owner of a wine bar and restaurant in Boston called Haley.Henry. He collects books and surgical antiquities and is a classic car and bourbon enthusiast. He enjoys sports, having played baseball, golf, and football growing up, and football in college as well.