Dr. Sheehan is a faculty member in the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Palliative Care within the Department of Medicine. He is a member of numerous professional societies including the American Society of Hematology, American Heart Association: Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology Council, the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis, the University of Wisconsin Paul P. Carbone Cancer Center, and the Hemostasis & Thrombosis Research Society. Dr. Sheehan has served as the Medical Director for the UW Health Comprehensive Bleeding Disorders Program since 2018 and more recently became Medical Director of the UW Hospitals and Clinics Special Coagulation Laboratory.
Dr. Sheehan has extensive clinical expertise in general hematology, bleeding and clotting disorders. His expertise includes inherited bleeding disorders, thrombosis and hypercoagulable states, and recurrent venous thromboembolism.
Dr. Sheehan’s research is focused on understanding regulation of the coagulation serine proteases, particularly with respect to interactions with serpins and glycosaminoglycans. The rationale for this work is that understanding regulation of the coagulation response will identify novel targets for antithrombotic therapy and aid in the design of proteins with enhanced in vivo therapeutic properties. His laboratory has produced an array of human factor IX variants with selective disruption of regulatory mechanisms (antithrombin, heparin, protein S) that are being characterized in murine hemostasis and thrombosis models. His laboratory has also developed a novel, highly sensitive assay for detection of factor IXa protease activity in human plasma. This assay is being applied in both premenopausal blood donors on oral contraceptives and pre-operative ovarian cancer patients to characterize the systemic hypercoagulability associated with these conditions.