Salama Assumes Leadership Role At DCBSM

April Salama, MD, director of the Melanoma Disease Group, has joined the Duke Center for Brain and Spine Metastasis (DCBSM) as associate medical director. She will retain her role as director of the Melanoma Disease Group.

"Dr. Salama has been involved in the development of this unique program — a collaborative effort involving Duke Cancer Institute — from the very beginning," said Peter Fecci, MD, PhD, overall director of the center, and Carey Anders, MD, medical director of the center, in a statement. "We are appreciative of her steadfast commitment to the DCBSM, her expertise in novel clinical trial design, and her exceptional clinical care of patients with brain metastases arising from melanoma. Her involvement will continue to strengthen our center."

Rates of brain metastasis diagnoses and spine metastasis diagnoses have been steadily rising over the past decade. For around half of all brain metastasis patients, the cancer originates in the lung. Other types of cancer that commonly spread to the brain include breast cancer and melanoma, followed by other cancers including kidney, other urologic cancers, colorectal, gynecologic and pancreatic cancers. The most common cancers that spread to the spine are breast, prostate, lung, kidney, and myeloma.

Other faculty leaders of the DCBSM, in addition to Fecci and Anders, include John Kirkpatrick, MD, PhD, radiation director, and C. Rory Goodwin, MD, PhD, surgical director. David Ashley, MBBS, PhD (director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke), Michael Kastan, MD, PhD (executive director of Duke Cancer Institute), and John Sampson, MD, PhD (chair of the Department of Neurosurgery) make up the center’s executive leadership team.