4DB Center: Physics of Metastasis over Time and Space

Dr. Bethel, a member of the Scripps Clinic Medical Group and the Dept of Pathology at Scripps Green Hospital, also holds academic appointments as an Adjunct Professor of Cell Biology at The Scripps Research Institute and Voluntary Assistant Clinical Professor at UCSD School of Medicine.

She is the Program Director of the Scripps Clinic/Scripps Green Hematopathology Fellowship and the Medical Director of the Scripps Clinic Medical Laboratory Blood Bank. As an active staff hematopathologist, she supervises the diagnostic hematopathology service at Scripps Clinic/Scripps Green Hospital, including interpretation of complex flow cytometry cases, serving patients at the Scripps Cancer Center and Stem Cell Transplant Program. She also provides medical directorship services to several clinical laboratory sections of the Scripps Clinic Medical Laboratory at Green Hospital. As well, she serves on multiple hospital and medical group committees, including credentialing, blood transfusion utilization review (chairperson), cancer committee, and tissue committee. In the last few years, Dr. Bethel has been published in multiple co-authored research papers on subjects ranging from hairy cell leukemia to extramedullary and choroidal hematopoiesis, as well as circulating tumor cells. She is currently the PI for a pilot research project on circulating tumor cells in colon cancer, funded by a competitive institutional grant awarded in 2008. She has extensive experience at the translational research interface having collaborated with the physical sciences research team of Dr. Kuhn for the past six years and having supervised numerous fellows and trainees in translational research. Through her ongoing experience in administrative roles at Scripps Clinic/Scripps Green Hospital, as well as extensive leadership roles in her earlier career as an active duty Navy physician, Dr. Bethel is well versed in the management of large enterprises. She will dedicate 100% of her research effort to the research program of the 4DB Center. She will also provide the oversight and team leadership to the entire medical oncology team from Scripps Clinic, the UCSD Cancer Center and Billings Clinic. As a pathologist, a hematopathologist, and a flow cytometrist, she will address the problems of detecting small numbers of malignant cells in the circulation and guide the development of optimal fluorescent staining approaches. She will also take primary responsibility for the study designs with regards to the patient selection strategies, will have oversight responsibility for the lung tissue sampling, and will carry out the tissue sampling of all colon cancer specimens.