Rona Carroll, MD, PhD

Rona Carroll, MD, PhD Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Associate Director, Neurosurgical Oncology Laboratory, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School  

Graduate Education:  

• M.A., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1985
• Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1987

Postdoctoral Training:

• Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 1987-1991

Clinical Interests:

Experimental therapies of brain tumors including local delivery, molecular genetics of brain tumors.

Rona Carroll is Associate Director of the Neurosurgical Oncology Laboratory in Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. The Neurosurgical Oncology laboratory engages in a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the basic biology of human brain tumors, and then uses this information to develop new therapeutic strategies. The laboratory provides a unique environment for neurosurgeons, basic scientists, medical students and research fellows to conduct cutting edge scientific studies. More specifically, Dr. Carroll has conducted seminal work on the expression and function of steroid hormone receptors in human meningiomas. This work is now being expanded in collaboration with Drs. Kalamarides and Giovannini in Paris, France. They are working on the development of new animal models of meningiomas and genetic characterization of these tumors by SNP and Affymetrix microarray analysis. Additionally, Dr. Carroll is developing new local deliveries methods for the treatment of brain tumors in collaboration with Dr. Marcelle Machluf, a bioengineer at the Technion University in Haifa, Israel.

Dr. Carroll is also the co-director of the Brain Tissue Bank and Cell Repository for Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital, Boston. The Tumor Bank contains approximately 2,500 human brain tumor specimens, and RNA, and DNA isolated from brain tumors. This bank represents a valuable resource for brain tumor research. Samples are sent to scientists around the world for their studies. he serves as an ad hoc reviewer for Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research and Journal of Neuro-oncology.Her research group has made research presentations around the world including at the European Neuro-oncology meeting in Italy and the Society of Neuro-oncology meeting in Colorado. Dr. Carroll was recently awarded a grant from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation in collaboration with Dr. Marcelle Machluf. Dr. Carroll’s research is also funded by grants from the NIH and the Brain Science Foundation.