Sara A. Monaghan, MD

Associate Professor of Pathology, Division of Hematopathology

Dr. Monaghan is a member of the Division of Hematopathology and medical director of the Clinical Flow Cytometry Laboratory at UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside. She is Councilor/Committee Chair of the International Clinical Cytometry Society (ICCS) Advocacy Committee. This committee identifies regulatory, reimbursement, and practice challenges affecting the clinical cytometry community's ability to deliver patient care and endeavors to engage with stakeholder groups and agencies to provide expert guidance and to ensure patient access to flow cytometry as a diagnostic modality.

Clinical Expertise

  • Adult and pediatric bone marrow and lymphoid tissue pathology

Certifications

  • American Board of Pathology - Hematology, 2002
  • American Board of Pathology - Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, 2001

Specialties

  • Flow cytometry
Education & Training
MD - Mayo Medical School, Rochester, Minnesota
Anatomic and Clinical Pathology - Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois
Hematopathology Fellowship - UT Southwestern
Research Interests

Flow cytometry for leukemia/lymphoma (e.g. standardization, test utilization, residual disease detection, assay validation, capacity of flow cytometry laboratories to adapt to higher volume and higher complexity testing).

Representative Publications

View Dr. Monaghan's publications on PubMed

  • Li JL, Lin YC, Wang YF, Monaghan SA, Ko BS, Lee CC. A chunking-for-pooling strategy for cytometric representation learning for automatic hematologic malignancy classification. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. 2022;26:4773-4784 DOI 10.1109/JBHl.2022.3175514 PMID 35588419
  • Monaghan SA, Li JL, Liu YC, Ko MY, Boyiadzis M, Chang TY, Wang YF, Lee CC, Swerdlow SH, Ko BS. A machine learning approach to the classification of acute leukemias and distinction from non-neoplastic cytopenias using flow cytometry data. Am J Clin Pathol. 2022; 157:546-553. PMID 34643210.
  • Swerdlow SH, Monaghan SA, Douglas AR, Johnson K, Johnson RL. Harmonization of training, training requirements, board certification, and practice of hematopathology. Am J Clin Pathol. 2019;152:625-37. PMID 31338515.
  • Agha M, Monaghan SA, Swerdlow SH. More on blastic plasmacytoid dendritic-cell neoplasms. N Engl J Med. 2019;380:696-7. PMID: 30763185.
  • Brown TJ, Patel PA, Oliver D, Churchill H, Monaghan SA, Collins RH. Next-Generation Sequencing Directs Therapy and Delineates a Clonal Relationship in Mast Cell Sarcoma and Acute Myeloid Leukemia. JCO Precision Oncology. Published online March 28, 2019. DOI https://doi.org/10.1200/PO.18.00291.
  • Agha M, Monaghan SA, Swerdlow SH. Venetoclax in a patient with a blastic plasmacytoid dendritic-cell neoplasm. N Engl J Med. 2018;379:1479-81. PMID: 30304659
  • Liu A, Li S, Donnenberg V, Fu J, Gollin SM, Ma H, Lu C, Stolz DB, Mapara MY, Monaghan SA, Lentzsch S. Immunomodulatory drugs downregulate IKZF1 leading to expansion of hematopoietic progenitors with concomitant block of megakaryocytic maturation. Haematologica. 2018;103:1688-97. PMID: 29954930
  • Yao H, Ma Y, Hong Z, Zhao L, Monaghan SA, Hu MC, Huang LJ. Activating JAK2 mutants reveal cytokine receptor coupling differences that impact outcomes in myeloproliferative neoplasm. Leukemia. 2017;31: 2122-31. PubMed PMID: 28057939
  • Koduru PR, Wilson K, Wen J,Garcia R, Patel S, Monaghan S. Cytogenetic and Cytogenomic Microarray Characterization of Chromothriptic-events in Chromosome 8 Affecting MOZ/NCOA2 (TIF2), FGFR1, RUNX1T1, and RUNX1 in a Pediatric Acute Myeloid Leukemia. J Pediatr Hematol Oncol. 2017;39:e227-32. PubMed PMID: 28085746
  • Monaghan SA, Felgar RE, Kelly MA, Ali AM, Anastasi J, Bellara A, Rinder HM, Sargent RL, Wagner J, Swerdlow SH, Johnson RL. Does taking the Fellowship In-Service Hematopathology Exam and performance relate to success on the American Board of Pathology Hematology Examination? Am J Clin Pathol. 2016 Jul;146(1):107-12. PubMed PMID: 27357289