Elizabeth Winans Tucker, M.D.

Headshot of Elizabeth Winans Tucker
  • Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
Female

Languages: English, Spanish

Expertise

Neurological Critical Care, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine ...read more

Locations

The Johns Hopkins Hospital (Main Entrance)

1800 Orleans St.
The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children's Center Building
Baltimore, MD 21287
The Johns Hopkins Hospital (Main Entrance) - Google Maps

Background

Dr. Elizabeth Tucker is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is a clinician scientist with a deep interest in neurocritical care, global health and infectious diseases. She joined the Johns Hopkins PICU faculty as an Instructor in July of 2015. As an attending physician, her clinical time is spent caring for critically ill children in the pediatric intensive care unit, with particular expertise as a pediatric neurocritical intensive care. Together with other members of the PICU team, she works to stabilize the patients and improve their outlook. She enjoys getting to know the families and values the opportunity to guide them through the course of their child’s illness and recovery.

Her clinical experience caring for children with neurological injury led her to the lab where she is passionate about conducting basic science and translational research to investigate how to improve her patient’s outcomes after brain injury. Dr. Tucker’s research focuses on tuberculous meningitis, the most severe form of extrapulmonary TB which disproportionately affects young children. The long-term goal of her research is to understand the pathogenesis of brain injury during tuberculous meningitis in children and design antimicrobial and adjunctive therapy as well as therapeutic monitoring to improve treatment and prognosis of children with devastating infections. In pursuit of this goal, she developed the first pediatric rabbit model of tuberculous meningitis during her pediatric critical care medicine fellowship to understand how the infection affects the developing brain and to investigate how to optimize meningitis treatment. Dr. Tucker’s research benefits from a strong network of mentors and collaborators in neuroscience, pediatric infectious disease, nuclear medicine, pharmacology and nanomedicine.

When she is not at work, Dr. Tucker enjoys running, hiking, sailing, and traveling to other countries.

Dr. Tucker received her undergraduate degree at Duke University in 2004 and attended medical school at Wake Forest University from 2005 to 2009. She completed her residency in pediatrics from 2009 to 2012 and her fellowship in pediatric critical care from 2012 to 2015, both at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

...read more

Titles

  • Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine

Departments / Divisions

Centers & Institutes

Education

Degrees

  • MD; Wake Forest University School of Medicine (2009)

Residencies

  • Pediatrics; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (2012)

Fellowships

  • Pediatric Critical Care; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (2015)

Board Certifications

  • American Board of Pediatrics (Pediatric Critical Care Medicine) (2016)
  • American Board of Pediatrics (Pediatrics) (2012)

Research & Publications

Research Summary

Her clinical experience caring for children with neurological injury led her to the lab where she is passionate about conducting basic science and translational research to investigate how to improve her patient’s outcomes after brain injury. Dr. Tucker’s research focuses on tuberculous meningitis, the most severe form of extrapulmonary TB which disproportionately affects young children. The long-term goal of her research is to understand the pathogenesis of brain injury during meningitis in children and design antimicrobial and adjunctive therapy as well as therapeutic monitoring to improve treatment and prognosis of children with devastating infections. In pursuit of this goal, she developed the first pediatric rabbit model of tuberculous meningitis during her pediatric critical care medicine fellowship to understand how the infection affects the developing brain and to investigate how to optimize meningitis treatment. Dr. Tucker’s research benefits from a strong network of mentors and collaborators in neuroscience, pediatric infectious disease, nuclear medicine, pharmacology, and nanomedicine. Dr. Tucker’s research benefits from a strong network of mentors and collaborators in neuroscience, pediatric infectious disease, nuclear medicine, pharmacology, and nanomedicine (Jain lab and Center for Nanomedicine) that provide unparalleled expertise and contribute immensely to her research.

Dr. Tucker is currently funded by NIH NIAID’s K08 Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award to optimize meningitis treatment by improving both the antimicrobial treatment against mycobacterium, the pathogen causing infection, and treatment against the destructive host immune response resulting in neuroinflammation and downstream brain injury. She utilizes noninvasive PET imaging to elucidate central nervous system antimicrobial pharmacokinetics as well as to monitor disease progression and response to treatment. Additionally, she is working to improve drug delivery to the brain using nanoparticles (i.e., dendrimers) and target the neuroinflammation with host-directed therapy. Recently, she has received funding from the Hartwell Foundation – 2018 Individual Biomedical Research Award where she is attempting to combine nanoparticle and PET imaging technology to create a dendrimer-based theranostic agent to diagnose injury severity, deliver targeted therapy, and monitor response to treatment in meningitis.

Lab

Lab Website: Tucker Lab

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