Richard A. Van Etten, MD

Dr. Richard Van Etten is a board-certified, fellowship-trained UCI Health hematologist and oncologist who specializes in the treatment of leukemia and other blood cancers. His clinical focus also includes hematopoetic stem cell transplant services. He is the director of the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he leads a team of more than 250 physicians, basic and translational scientists conducting cancer research at UC Irvine. Van Etten received a medical degree and a PhD in biophysics from the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he worked with biochemist David F. Clayton, PhD, on the molecular genetics of mammalian mitochondrial DNA and brain development. He went on to complete a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in hematology at Harvard School of Medicine and Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. Next he worked as a visiting scientist in the lab of Nobel laureate David Baltimore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead Institute in Boston. He joined the Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's Hospital as a faculty member of the departments of Medicine and Genetics. In 2003, he became a professor of Medicine at Tufts Medical Center and director of the Hematologic Malignancies Program at Tufts Cancer Center, eventually becoming chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology. In 2009, he was named director of the Tufts Cancer Center. Van Etten became director of the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center on Oct. 1, 2013 and a professor of Medicine and Biochemistry in the UCI School of Medicine. Under his leadership, the cancer center's comprehensive cancer center designation has been renewed twice by the National Cancer Institute. He is the author of more than 150 scientific articles, reviews and book chapters. His research lab, which is funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute, investigates the molecular pathogenesis of leukemia and myeloproliferative neoplasms with an emphasis on dysregulated tyrosine kinases and mouse model systems.