Testing the Response to the Anti-cancer Drug, Triapine, in Uterine Cancers Using Markers From the Tissue at the Time of Hysterectomy

Inclusion Criteria: * Patients must have histologically confirmed uterine corpus serous adenocarcinoma * Patients must be planned for surgical hysterectomy and operative staging * Patients must have adequate archival tissue obtained within 8 weeks of step 1 registration OR have sufficient tumor tissue and be willing to undergo an endometrial pipelle biopsy prior to beginning study treatment. * Patients must have adequate primary tumor volume, as determined by imaging (e.g., computed tomography \[CT\], ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging \[MRI\]) at eligibility screening, to accommodate research specimen collections in addition to clinical pathology evaluation * Patients must not have received any prior anticancer treatment for endometrial cancer * Patients must be \>= 18 years old. Because no dosing or adverse event data are currently available on the use of triapine in patients \< 18 years of age, children are excluded from this study * Patients must have an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status =\< 2 (Karnofsky \>= 60%) * Absolute neutrophil count \>= 1,000/mcL * Platelets \>= 100,000/mcL * Hemoglobin \>= 9.0 g/dL * Total bilirubin =\< 1.5 x institutional upper limit of normal (ULN) * Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) (serum glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase \[SGOT\])/alanine aminotransferase (ALT) (serum glutamate pyruvate transaminase \[SGPT\]) =\< 3 x institutional ULN * International normalized ratio (INR) =\< 2 * Creatinine =\< 1.5 x instituti…