The Enormous Impact of EVA/PCD Chemosensitivity Testing in Patients with Rare Cancers: Durable Benefit Provided by An Unexpected Recommendation

Early in October 2026 I was contacted by a young woman from Brazil. She had been diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma, known as epithelioid hemangioendothelioma. Her tumor had progressed and she submitted a surgical biopsy of her tumor tissue to our laboratory.

Now several years later the patient contacted us to describe her remarkable and durable response to our selected therapy. The drug we recommended, Pazopanib, would not normally be expected to have activity in this rare and aggressive cancer. Pazopanib is a member of the class of drugs known as “targeted” agents. It works by blocking cell signaling through many pathways leading to its designation as a multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor.

While Pazopanib was approved for the treatment of sarcoma following the 2012 Palette clinical trial (van der graaf, Lancet May 2012) in that study only 6% of patients showed measurable response. A more recent study of first-line Pazopanib in untreated endothelial hemangioendothelioma patients showed no objective responses whatsoever (Burkhard-Meir, Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology, April 2025).

In our communication with the patient, she explained that she was in touch with another patient with the same diagnosis who submitted tissue to our lab, received the same drug based upon our recommendation and is now in remission 10 years later.

What could explain these patients’ extraordinarily good outcomes? The answer: they received a drug that worked for their tumor.

The expectation on the part of the treating physician would have been grim as they confronted a literature-reported response rate of zero to 6%. But here, based upon the unique ability of the EVA/PCD tissue culture platform to separate the “wheat from the chaff” and find active drugs, these patients are alive and well.

Cancer outcomes do not reflect statistical expectations. Population statistics cannot be applied to individuals.

Patients do not sign up to be subjects in an academic exercise whose purpose is to advance the field at an uncomfortably glacial pace. They want answers and actionable results.

There are no untreatable cancers, but there are untreatable patients. For many patients we have simply not found the right answer for them. Not unlike our work in another rare disease, Fibrolamellar cancer, where we used the EVA/PCD laboratory to craft new and effective therapies for a highly lethal malignancy (Schneider, Cancers, 2026) these outcomes reflect patients receiving the right treatment at the right time.

Patients who confront resistance in using the EVA/PCD platform must explain to their physicians that any insight, any data, any approach that can provide benefit should be pursued.