Dr. Skvarca is the Director of Perinatal Pathology in the Division of Breast, Gynecologic, and Perinatal Pathology at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital.
Clinical Expertise
Perinatal/Obstetric and Gynecologic Pathology
Certifications
American Board of Pathology, Anatomic Pathology
Education & Training
Bachelors of Science – Washington University in St. Louis (2009)
PhD – University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Medical Scientist Training Program, Developmental Biology (2015)
MD – University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Medical Scientist Training Program (2017)
Residency – UPMC Anatomic Pathology and PIRRT Program (2021)
Fellowship – Clinical Instructor in Gynecologic, Perinatal, and Breast Pathology, UPMC Magee Womens Hospital (2022)
Research Interests
- Correlation of placental histopathologic lesions with long-term maternal health outcomes.
- Quantitative image analysis of biomarkers of placental vascular injury.
- Biomarker testing in gynecologic cancer.
Representative Publications
- Clymer D, Kostadinov S, Catov J, Skvarca LB, Pantanowitz L, Cagan J, LeDuc P. Decidual Vasculopathy Identification in Whole-Slide Images Using Multi-Resolution Hierarchical Convolutional Neural Networks. Am J Pathol. 2020 Oct;190(10):2111-2122. PMID: 32679230.
- *Heayn M, *Skvarca LB, Zhu L, Edwards RP, Olawaiye AB, Modugno F, Elishaev E, Bhargava R. Impact of Ki-67 labeling index on prognostic significance of the chemotherapy response score in women with tubo-ovarian cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Int J Gynecol Pathol. 2020 Sep 4, Online ahead of print. PMID: 32897953
- *Skvarca LB, *Han HI, Espiritu EB, Missinato MA, Rochon ER, McDaniels MD, Bais AS, Roman BL, Waxman JS, Watkins SC, Davidson AJ, Tsang MW, Hukriede NA. Enhancing acute kidney injury regeneration by promoting cellular dedifferentiation in zebrafish. Dis Model Mech. 2019 Apr 5;12(4). PMCID: PMC6505474.
- Han HI, Skvarca LB, Espiritu EB, Davidson AJ, Hukriede NA. The role of macrophages during acute kidney injury: destruction and repair. Pediatr Nephrol. 2019 Apr;34(4):561-569. Review. PMCID: PMC6066473.
- *Chiba T, *Skrypnyk NI, *Skvarca LB, Penchev R, Zhang KX, Rochon ER, et al. Retinoic acid signaling coordinates macrophage-dependent injury and repair after AKI. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2016;27(2):495-508. PMCID: PMC4731115.
- Naylor RW, Skvarca LB, Thisse C, Thisse B, Hukriede NA, Davidson AJ. BMP and retinoic acid regulate anterior-posterior patterning of the non-axial mesoderm across the dorsal-ventral axis. Nat Commun. 2016;7:12197. PMCID: PMC4947171.