Donghee Lee, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate in the UF College of Veterinary Medicine, wants to change the narrative on rare cancers like angiosarcoma. Angiosarcoma, which occurs only in about one per million people each year in the United States, has a five-year survival rate of only about 40%.
Few new therapies have been developed for the aggressive cancer in blood and lymph vessels, in large part because few studies have mapped the genetic landscape of the cells to identify new treatment targets.
But that work — known as comprehensive genomic profiling — can reveal that rare cancers may not be so rare when it comes to their genetic mutations. Angiosarcoma shares a genetic mutation often found in lung and other cancers: the RAS mutation. It’s the most commonly mutated gene in human cancers.
“That means we could treat rare cancers with existing drugs used to target genetic mutations in other cancers,” said Lee, who works in the lab of UF Health Cancer Institute member Jon Hyuk Kim, D.V.M., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the UF College of Veterinary Medicine.
Now, for the first time, the team has performed comprehensive genomic profiling of angiosarcoma cells, analyzing hundreds of genes in specific cell types and studying how they interact with each other and with the environment. The work, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2026 in San Diego, showed RAS plays a big role in helping angiosarcoma cells survive and spread.
“We found that most angiosarcoma cell lines depend on RAS,” Lee said. “There are so many cancer cell lines being researched in the world, but not for rare cancers. We want to introduce angiosarcoma cell lines to the public. If they use the cell lines more and more, there will be an opportunity to find a cure for angiosarcoma.”
The research team screened 179 FDA-approved drugs in five angiosarcoma cell lines. By combining these results with genetic mapping, they identified RAS as the cancer’s main weakness.
“We chose a powerful new drug called RMC-7977 to target the weakness,” Lee said. “It showed remarkable efficacy in mouse models.”
The RAS inhibitor is being developed for phase 3 clinical trials in other cancers. The drug was effective both in angiosarcoma cells with RAS mutations and those without, the researchers found. The RAS signaling pathway was activated in tissues of patients with angiosarcoma regardless of whether they had the mutations, suggesting the drug could be used to target angiosarcomas with complex genetic mutations.
But the researchers found angiosarcoma eventually returned in cells treated with RMC-7977. They’re investigating why some cells had resistance and survived and further evaluating the drug’s clinical potential. The researchers are also looking at another drug, tirbanibulin, that could be a new option.
Research in Kim’s lab focuses on angiosarcoma’s counterpart in dogs, hemangiosarcoma, which is common in dogs. That gives the team a wealth of data to draw on when advancing treatments that could help not only humans but our furry friends.
