Edward R.B. McCabe, MD, PhD, an internationally recognized expert in pediatrics and genetics has been named Senior Vice President and Medical Director by the March of Dimes Foundation, it was announced today. In his new role, Dr. McCabe will oversee the medical and clinical initiatives of the March of Dimes, one of the nation’s leaders in maternal and infant health. He will assume his new responsibilities in November.
“As a leader in children’s health, Dr. McCabe will advance the March of Dimes mission and continue our lifesaving work in the prevention of birth defects, infant mortality and preterm birth,” said Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, president of the March of Dimes. “He was an early champion for expanded newborn screening and today universal screening is available in every state. He has also served the March of Dimes as Chair of the Basil O’Connor Award Committee.”
Dr. McCabe served as Executive Director of the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome, the Anna and John J. Sie Endowed Chair in Down Syndrome Research and Clinical Care, and a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine from 2010-2012.
Prior to his appointment at Colorado, he was at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), as executive chairman of the Department of Pediatrics and Physician-in-Chief of the Mattel Children’s Hospital, an institution that he established with a Mattel gift of $25 million. He also held the Mattel Endowed Chair of Pediatrics, and was professor of genetics as well as professor of bio-engineering. He founded and served as co-director of the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics and established the first program in nano-pediatrics. With his wife, Linda McCabe, PhD, he wrote “How to Succeed in Academics” and “DNA: Promise and Peril,” to support the courses they taught at UCLA.
Dr. McCabe identified the first patients with glycerol kinase deficiency, part of a genetic syndrome contiguous with congenital adrenal hypoplasia and he cloned the genes for these disorders. He also developed genetic strategies to confirm the diagnosis of sickle cell disease when it has been identified through newborn screening.
Dr. McCabe began his research career at the age of 15 in the pediatric research laboratory at the University of Maryland School of Medicine School. He graduated from The Johns Hopkins University, and earned his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Southern California. He completed his pediatric residency at the University of Minnesota. He also was a member of the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine, where he established the Baylor Mental Retardation Research Center and the Baylor Child Health Research Center.
Dr. McCabe was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001 and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003. He was president of the American Board of Medical Genetics, the American College of Medical Genetics, the American Society of Human Genetics, the American Pediatric Society and the 11th International Congress of Inborn Errors of Metabolism.