Roles
Associate Professor of Clinical Neurological Surgery
Director, Pediatric Neurosurgery Holtz Children’s Hospital/Jackson
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Biography
Heather J. McCrea, MD, PhD, is board certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery and the American Board of Pediatric Neurological Surgery. She specializes in the field of pediatric neurosurgery. Her neurosurgical training was completed at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She then completed specialized fellowship training in pediatric neurosurgery and served as the Shillito Staff Associate at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Prior to her neurosurgical training, Dr. McCrea completed her undergraduate degree at Brown University with an ScB degree with honors in biochemistry and received her MD and PhD degrees from Yale University. Her PhD in cell biology was completed under the supervision of Dr. Pietro De Camilli, a noted cell biologist and neuroscientist and member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. During her PhD, she studied a rare genetic disorder affecting the brain, eye, and kidney. Dr. McCrea serves as the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery for Holtz Children’s Hospital/Jackson Memorial Hospital and cares for children at both Holtz Children’s and Nicklaus Children’s Hospitals. She operates on the entire range of pediatric neurosurgical conditions, but has a particular interest in pediatric brain tumors, pediatric vascular conditions including Moya Moya, hydrocephalus, Chiari malformation, and tethered cord. She also has significant expertise in the use of endoscopy to treat brain and pituitary tumors, hydrocephalus, intracranial cysts, and craniosynostosis. As part of a multidisciplinary team, Dr. McCrea also sees pediatric patients in the Comprehensive Spina Bifida program at Holtz Children’s Hospital, which addresses everything from neurosurgical and urological treatment to dietary and orthopedic care in one centralized location. In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. McCrea is an accomplished researcher with significant basic and translational science contributions, and she has presented her research both nationally and internationally. While in neurosurgical residency at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell she received a prestigious Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation (NREF) research fellowship grant to support her research on the role of the vasculature in supporting brain tumor growth. Her current research focuses on understanding and developing new treatments for pediatric brain tumors, drug delivery across the blood brain barrier, intra-arterial chemotherapy for high-grade glioma and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), and concussion/traumatic brain injury. -
Education & Training
Education
Post Graduate Training
Licensures and Certifications
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Honors & Awards
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Research Interests
My research interests have focused on novel therapies for pediatric brain tumors, traumatic brain injury, congenital anomalies/hydrocephalus, and rigid and flexible endoscopy in neurosurgery. I have collaborated with basic scientists at the University of Miami and other institutions regarding developing new therapies for medulloblastoma and better understanding and manipulating the blood brain barrier for drug delivery. The central focus of my clinical research has been improving therapies for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a deadly brain tumor of children for which survival is typically less than one year. I have focused my research on drug delivery through the vasculature as a mechanism to increase drug delivery across the blood brain barrier. As a resident at Weill Cornell/New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, I initiated a Phase I/II trial of intra-arterial bevacizumab and cetuximab for pediatric patients with relapsed refractory high grade glioma and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma: NCT01884740 which opened in 2013 at Cornell, and I continued to complete this study at Cornell while I was on faculty at University of Miami. I was lead author on our study published summer 2021. The next step in this trial will be adding repeat monthly dosing and we hope to soon open this trial at the University of Miami/Holtz Children’s Hospital in addition to Cornell. We have obtained approval from Cornell to add Miami as a second site and are working on final approval at Jackson to open. The Women’s Cancer Association recognized the importance of this study by awarding me a $45,000 grant to put towards a clinical coordinator. I also collaborated with scientists at Harvard to model our clinical trial drug delivery on a blood brain barrier chip, and this work was published in Nature Communications. In addition to pediatric brain tumors, I have focused research on traumatic brain injury, including athletic injury and head injury in NFL players. Given the significant number of cranial and spinal gunshot wound patients we see at Jackson, I have now initiated studies to look at this patient population specifically to understand root causes and how we can impact survival. -
Publications
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Professional Activities
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