RARE DISEASERESEARCH ATLAS

ORPHA:99969

Pleomorphic liposarcoma

low confidenceSubtype of disorder

Also known as: PLS

Publications

1,611

Trials

7

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,203

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

Readiness

3/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

Pleomorphic liposarcoma (PLS), the rarest subtype of liposarcoma (LS), is an aggressive, fast growing tumor located usually in the deep soft tissues of the lower and upper extremities. It is characterized by a variable number of pleomorphic lipoblasts and, in contrast to dedifferentiated liposarcoma, it lacks any association with well-differentiated liposarcoma.

How rare: How common this is has not been clearly measured.

Orphanet entry

Cross-references

Joined from Mondo / Orphanet. MeSH labels may enter searches; UMLS / OMIM / NCIT are stored for reference.

Additional Mondo synonyms (2)

pleomorphic liposarcoma · pleomorphic liposarcoma (morphologic abnormality)

Research stages

Trial readiness signals

Where this condition sits on an open-data research pipeline — not how close a treatment is, and not medical advice. Empty stages often mean “not in these databases under this Mondo ID,” not “impossible.”

3/6 stages with a signal

An interventional trial matched this condition name on ClinicalTrials.gov — see trials below.

  1. Gene identifiedNot found

    No GenCC disease–gene assertion in this build

  2. LiteraturePresent

    1,611 matched papers (1,077 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    2 HPO annotations (e.g. Liposarcoma; Subcutaneous nodule) Source

  4. Animal modelNot found

    No Alliance genotype “model of” associations via Monarch for these Mondo IDs

  5. Orphan designationNot found

    No FDA or EMA orphan-drug designation matched this disease via UMLS or preferred name Source

  6. Interventional trialPresent

    7 matched on ClinicalTrials.gov (5 recruiting in sample)

Biology

Genes and phenotypes

Gene–disease validity from GenCC, plus phenotypes and animal models joined from Monarch Initiative via Mondo ID — not a clinical diagnosis aid.

Do we know what causes it?

Not yet — the cause hasn't been pinned down in GenCC.

No strong gene–disease assertion joined for this Orphanet entity.

Phenotypes (Monarch / HPO)

2

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0020562

  • Liposarcoma
  • Subcutaneous nodule

Animal models (Monarch / Alliance)

None returned for this Mondo ID. Empty here is not proof that no model organism work exists under another name or gene.

Monarch fetch 2026-07-27

Therapies

Designations, candidates, and chemicals

FDA OOPD and EMA orphan designations, Open Targets clinical candidates, and CTD chemical associations via MyDisease.info. These never change the interventional-trial headline.

Orphan designation (FDA · EMA)

No designation matched this disease via UMLS or preferred name on the FDA OOPD mirror or EMA orphan register. Absence here is not proof that none exists under another wording.

Open Targets candidates

2

Drugs / clinical candidates · MONDO_0020562

CTD chemicals (MyDisease.info)

No CTD chemical associations returned for this Mondo ID.

Literature

Is anyone studying this?

1,611

1,611 papers have been published on this condition. That is a real research literature — still far smaller than common diseases (breast cancer: over 700,000 papers). Median papers in the last 10 years for a rare disease in this dataset (publications denominator n=3967) is 59.

1,611 papers since the earliest indexed year in this search — median last-10-year count for a rare disease in this dataset is 59 (publications denominator n=3967).

1,077 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 1,611 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,203

Distinct author names in 200 sampled papers — named people below.

Who's working on it?

People publishing on this condition (sampled Europe PMC records). Affiliation is the most recent found in that sample.

  1. 01
    Wang X6 papers · 2025

    Department of Oncology, Women and Children's Hospital Affiliated to Qingdao University, Qingdao, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Wang Y5 papers · 2025

    Department of Anorectal, The Affiliated Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, CHN.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Costache M4 papers · 2025

    Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, "Carol Davila" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 030167 Bucharest, Romania.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Dermawan JK4 papers · 2024

    Robert J. Tomsich Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Li Y4 papers · 2026

    Department of Orthopedics, People’s Hospital of Pingchang County, Pingchang, Sichuan 636400, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Li Z4 papers · 2025

    Hebei General Hospital, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China; Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Marin A4 papers · 2025

    Department of Plastic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, "Carol Davila" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 030167 Bucharest, Romania.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Wang Z4 papers · 2026

    Department of Medical Oncology, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Zhang C4 papers · 2025

    Department of Medical Oncology, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Zhang J4 papers · 2025

    Department of Pharmacy, Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200233, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

7

interventional trials for this specific condition

7 interventional trials matched this specific condition name; 5 currently recruiting in our sample. 127 trials are registered for liposarcoma, the broader category — shown separately because they may or may not enrol this specific subtype.

Data as of 9 September 2026

7 interventional trials — more than 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5501 of 7126; this disease is at the 90.9th percentile).

low confidence · 90.9th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

7 interventional trials matched after quoted-phrase search and title/condition post-filter.

Broader category: liposarcoma

127

Interventional trials for the parent category, exclusive of NCT IDs already counted above. Eligibility for this subtype is not guaranteed.

Worth raising with a clinician. How we count trials.

Recruiting under the broader category

Observational and natural-history studies

1 observational study matches this condition. These do not test a treatment and are not counted in the interventional-trial headline, but they are genuine research: natural-history work often defines the endpoints needed for a future rare-disease trial, and families may be able to enroll.

None of the matched observational studies is currently listed as recruiting.

Open the complete matched search on ClinicalTrials.gov

Other registries (secondary)

Broader net from EU CTIS, ISRCTN, and ICTRP when available — deduped against ClinicalTrials.gov IDs already counted above. Dual-model LLM relevance gates what we keep. These rows are not added to the interventional headline.

raw 4 · after dedupe 4 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 4 · dropped 0 · fetched 2026-07-27

Source notes: ictrp: Error: ICTRP public search unavailable (WHO portal is SPA-only; SOAP needs partnership). Tried: https://apps.who.int/tri

No secondary-registry studies passed dual-model relevance for this condition name (after dedupe).

Uncertain / not reviewed (4)

Where to find support

Condition-specific patient organisations, when Orphanet lists them, are on the disease’s Orphanet page. We also link umbrella groups that support undiagnosed and ultra-rare families.

Orphanet entry for Pleomorphic liposarcoma — check Associations / patient organisations on that page.

India — NPRD

Last verified 2026-07-26

This ORPHAcode is not on our curated NPRD list (direct or Mondo-parent match). That does not decide clinical eligibility; families in India should ask a notified Centre of Excellence about current coverage.

Hand-curated for this project. ORPHAcode mappings are best-effort and may be incomplete or imprecise for umbrella categories. Parent (Mondo) matches mean the policy lists a broader category — confirm eligibility with a Centre of Excellence. Financial entitlements summarised from public policy statements and may change. This is not official government guidance.

How we counted this

Europe PMC query (preferred label + any corrected label + Orphanet and Mondo exact synonyms, stoplisted; unioned with resolved MeSH labels when available). UMLS / OMIM / NCIT cross-references are stored on the overview but are not added to the query string.

"Pleomorphic liposarcoma" OR "pleomorphic liposarcoma (morphologic abnormality)"

Run this search on Europe PMC

ClinicalTrials.gov query (quoted phrases + MeSH via query.cond, plus recall-expansion terms when used):

"Pleomorphic liposarcoma" OR "pleomorphic liposarcoma (morphologic abnormality)"

Interventional trials matched via: phrase (mesh = registered under a MeSH descriptor no name phrase would catch; recall-expansion = gene / selected parent terms used only for trials).

Study-type breakdown: 7 interventional · 1 observational · 0 expanded access. Only interventional studies enter the trial headline.

Parent-category trials query:

"liposarcoma"

Query health: ok — strategies attempted: phrase; with hits: phrase

Run this search on ClinicalTrials.gov

Synonyms dropped by stoplist: PLS

Confidence reasoning

  • Preferred label is multi-word and distinctive
  • 1 synonym(s) dropped by stoplist (may under-count)
  • No label/synonym collisions with other diseases in this corpus
  • Publication count (1611) is extremely high with unknown/missing prevalence — treat as possible over-matching, not proven research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-26T01:40:15.838Z