Research

Our lab studies malignant vascular sarcomas including angiosarcoma and EHE. These are rare and  aggressive cancers from blood and lymphatic endothelial cells. Despite the extremely poor prognosis for patients, the genetic drivers and molecular mechanisms of these tumors remain unclear. In recent work, we found that Dicer1 and microRNAs may function as critical tumor suppressors in endothelial cells. We have gone on to generate additional tumor models investigating other genes known to be altered in patients. We leverage these genetic models to study tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis in vivo and in cell line models. We are also deeply interested in identifying the critical tumor suppressing miRNAs and their roles in tumorigenesis. Our goal is to generate tools and models to advance our understanding of these rare cancers and leverage these findings towards novel therapies to improve patient outcomes.