About

Christopher Shea is a Clinical Professor at the University of Chicago, Department of Medicine-Dermatology. His work involves dermatopathology, skin cancer, and immunotherapy-related mucocutaneous eruptions. Shea has contributed to advancing histopathologic reporting standards for primary cutaneous melanoma and has conducted research on melanocytic tumors, nonmelanoma skin cancer, and the molecular profiling of skin cancers. His research also encompasses the development of AI-assisted diagnostic tools for skin cancer and the investigation of gene-environment interactions in skin carcinogenesis. Shea's expertise extends to clinical histology, vaccine support in pediatric care, and health services research, including implementation strategies and healthcare policy analysis. His work emphasizes improving diagnostic accuracy, understanding disease mechanisms, and enhancing healthcare delivery in dermatology and related fields.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Cancer research
• Medicine
• Biology
• Dermatology
• Genetics
• Pathology
• Information Retrieval
• Chemistry
• Surgery
• Data Mining
• Internal medicine
• Radiology
• Database
• Molecular biology
• Computational biology
• Medical physics
• Biochemistry
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• Current Trends in Melanocytic Lesions

  Dermatologic Clinics · 2026-02-12

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Correction to: New Eczematous Eruption in Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease Who Stop Janus Kinase Inhibitors

  The American Journal of Gastroenterology · 2026-02-05

  article
  PublisherDOI

• In memoriam: Eugene Joseph Van Scott, MD (1922-2025)

  Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology · 2026-02-07

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The impact of next generation sequencing studies on the diagnosis of BAP1 inactivated melanocytic tumors

  Human Pathology · 2026-03-13

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Shifts in Cutaneous Melanocytic Tumor Diagnostic Terminology:Melanocytoma, MPATH-Dx V2.0 and the WHO Skin5

  Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access

  In this Special Issue of the Journal of Cutaneous Pathology in memory of Dr. Martin C. Mihm, Jr, we highlight his many contributions over more than 50 years to the catalog of specific melanocytic tumor terminology. Dr. Mihm was an active participant in the International Melanoma Pathology Study Group (IMPSG). Discussions led to proposed recommendations for changes in the terminology of melanocytic tumors and their standardized diagnostic reporting. Histopathological reports of melanocytic tumors provide critical information that guides patient counseling and therapy. Importantly the pathology report must relay whether the melanocytic tumor is benign, intermediate, or malignant, and when appropriate, indicate diagnostic and/or prognostic uncertainty. Recent shifts in diagnostic terminology include the recommended use of the term "melanocytoma" to describe a morphologically and genetically defined subset of intermediate risk melanocytic tumors with higher (although still very low) risk of progression compared with benign nevi. Melanocytomas are distinguished from melanocytic tumors of uncertain malignant potential (MELTUMP) which are histopathologically indeterminate or uncertain tumors. In the setting of a broad lexicon for the reporting of melanocytic tumors, an assessment tool has been developed to map existing diverse terminologies into distinct hierarchical classes. The Melanocytic Pathology Assessment Tool and Hierarchy for Diagnosis (MPATH-Dx) V2.0 provides a four-tiered classification scheme that is tiered by risk of tumor progression and recommended treatment. The purpose of this review is to report these shifts in diagnostic terminology, discussed and reviewed at the annual workshop of the IMPSG, in Edinburg, Scotland, in November 2022. This discussion included the use of the term melanocytoma, and the use of the MPATH-Dx V2.0 classification and terminology for melanocytic tumors. Dr. Mihm was diligent in his attention to specific terminology, in his memory we aim to recommend terminology that improves communication in the care of those diagnosed with melanocytic tumors.

  Publisher

• Progressive Immunotherapy-Related Mucocutaneous Eruption: A Mimicker of SJS-TEN

  American Journal of Dermatopathology · 2025-07-30 · 1 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT: Immune checkpoint inhibitors are an integral component of oncology treatment. Adverse systemic effects of this immune modulation are often manifested in the skin and, therefore, must be carefully described and characterized to inform clinical decision making in medically complex patients. Here we report 2 cases of progressive immunotherapy-related mucocutaneous eruption that resemble Stevens-Johnson Syndrome but is unique in its clinical and histopathologic presentation, supporting a distinction from classic medication-induced Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis.

  PublisherDOI

• Setting A New Standard for Histopathologic Reporting of Primary Cutaneous Melanoma: Progress Made by the Melanoma Reporting Task Force of the American Society of Dermatopathology

  Journal of Cutaneous Pathology · 2025-08-04

  editorial

  Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

  PublisherDOI

• Abstract 1141: Improved diagnosis of non-melanoma skin cancer in resource-limited settings

  Cancer Research · 2025-05-22

  article

  Abstract Background: In resource-limited settings, cancer diagnosis is often challenging due to a shortage of expert pathologists. Early and precise diagnosis is vital to enhancing treatment outcomes and reducing morbidity of patients. This issue is particularly prevalent in regions like Bangladesh, where high levels of arsenic exposure increase the risk of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC). Here, we assess the effectiveness of general-purpose pathology foundation models (FMs) for diagnosis of NMSC. In particular, we aim to determine if FMs have value in resource-constrained environments, such that encodings from scanned whole slide images can be used with simple classification models that can run efficiently in resource-limited settings. Method: Using 5-fold cross validation, we evaluated three pathology foundation models (UNI, PRISM, and Prov-GigaPath) as well as a ResNet18 baseline model using de-identified NMSC data from the Bangladesh Vitamin E and Selenium Trial (BEST) by the Institute for Population and Precision Health at the University of Chicago. This data contained 2,130 hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained whole slide images from 553 suspected NMSC biopsy samples from 455 participants. The slides included normal tissue (n=706), Bowen’s disease (n=638), basal cell carcinoma (n=575), and invasive squamous cell carcinoma (n=211). In addition to comparing the three FMs for generating tile embeddings in a zero-shot framework, we also evaluated tile aggregation methods, including global average pooling (GAP), attention-based multi-instance learning (ABMIL), and methods specific to respective FMs. Lastly, we compared the performance of logistic regression, XGBoost, and shallow multilayer perceptron neural networks (MLP) for the prediction of cancer subtype from the slide embedding. Results: All three FMs significantly outperformed ResNet18 (mean AUROC=0.805; p<0.001). We found that the overall best model used the PRISM tile embeddings aggregated using PRISM’s intrinsic Perceiver network to train an MLP model to predict NMSC subtype (mean AUROC=0.925; p<0.001). Within the other FMs specifically, we found that using ABMIL to aggregate tile embeddings to train an MLP model was optimal for both UNI (mean AUROC=0.913; p<0.001) and Prov-GigaPath (mean AUROC=0.908, p<0.001). We also found the simplest method with logistic regression of GAP aggregated embeddings was able to attain reasonable results for PRISM (mean AUROC=0.882), UNI (mean AUROC=0.865), and Prov-GigaPath (mean AUROC=0.855). Conclusion: Our study highlights the importance of innovation in confronting public health challenges and exhibits a real-world potential for machine learning aided cancer diagnosis. We demonstrate how leveraging whole slide embeddings from pre-trained foundation models can provide considerable potential for the improvement of treatment outcomes and patient survival rates, especially in resource-limited settings. Citation Format: Spencer Ellis, Steven Song, Derek Reiman, Xuan Hui, Renyu Zhang, Mohammad H. Shahriar, Mohammed Kamal, Christopher R. Shea, Robert L. Grossman, Aly A. Khan, Habibul Ahsan. Improved diagnosis of non-melanoma skin cancer in resource-limited settings [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2025; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2025 Apr 25-30; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2025;85(8_Suppl_1):Abstract nr 1141.

  PublisherDOI

• New Eczematous Eruption in Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease Who Stop Janus Kinase Inhibitors

  The American Journal of Gastroenterology · 2025-08-22

  article

  INTRODUCTION: Janus kinase inhibitors (JAKi) are small-molecule therapies used in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We describe 8 patients with IBD who developed an eczematous eruption, presumed atopic dermatitis (AD), after stopping JAKi therapy. METHODS: This case series describes 8 patients with IBD who developed de novo AD after withdrawal of JAKi therapy. RESULTS: Median time to AD onset was 7 days (interquartile range 2-12). Two cases with biopsy-confirmed AD resolved after reinitiation of JAKi therapy and adjunct AD treatments. DISCUSSION: A subset of patients with IBD may have latent susceptibility to AD, unmasked by therapy cessation and potentially triggered by an immune rebound effect.

  PublisherDOI

• Shifts in Cutaneous Melanocytic Tumor Diagnostic Terminology: Melanocytoma, <scp>MPATH</scp> ‐Dx <scp>V2.0</scp> and the <scp>WHO</scp> Skin5

  Journal of Cutaneous Pathology · 2025-04-04 · 1 citations

  reviewOpen access

  In this Special Issue of the Journal of Cutaneous Pathology in memory of Dr. Martin C. Mihm, Jr, we highlight his many contributions over more than 50 years to the catalog of specific melanocytic tumor terminology. Dr. Mihm was an active participant in the International Melanoma Pathology Study Group (IMPSG). Discussions led to proposed recommendations for changes in the terminology of melanocytic tumors and their standardized diagnostic reporting. Histopathological reports of melanocytic tumors provide critical information that guides patient counseling and therapy. Importantly the pathology report must relay whether the melanocytic tumor is benign, intermediate, or malignant, and when appropriate, indicate diagnostic and/or prognostic uncertainty. Recent shifts in diagnostic terminology include the recommended use of the term "melanocytoma" to describe a morphologically and genetically defined subset of intermediate risk melanocytic tumors with higher (although still very low) risk of progression compared with benign nevi. Melanocytomas are distinguished from melanocytic tumors of uncertain malignant potential (MELTUMP) which are histopathologically indeterminate or uncertain tumors. In the setting of a broad lexicon for the reporting of melanocytic tumors, an assessment tool has been developed to map existing diverse terminologies into distinct hierarchical classes. The Melanocytic Pathology Assessment Tool and Hierarchy for Diagnosis (MPATH-Dx) V2.0 provides a four-tiered classification scheme that is tiered by risk of tumor progression and recommended treatment. The purpose of this review is to report these shifts in diagnostic terminology, discussed and reviewed at the annual workshop of the IMPSG, in Edinburg, Scotland, in November 2022. This discussion included the use of the term melanocytoma, and the use of the MPATH-Dx V2.0 classification and terminology for melanocytic tumors. Dr. Mihm was diligent in his attention to specific terminology, in his memory we aim to recommend terminology that improves communication in the care of those diagnosed with melanocytic tumors.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Víctor G. Prieto

  The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

  154 shared

• N. Scott McNutt

  44 shared

• Jon A. Reed

  Northeastern University

  42 shared

• James L. Burchette

  34 shared

• Tayyaba Hasan

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  33 shared

• Marcelo G. Horenstein

  Cornell University

  33 shared

• James M. Grichnik

  University of South Florida

  29 shared

• Keyoumars Soltani

  University of Chicago

  26 shared

Education

• MD

  Georgetown University

  1983