Targeting Phosphatidylserine in Anti-Cancer Therapy

Targeted delivery of cytotoxic agents limits the severe toxic side-effects of anti-cancer drugs on healthy tissues. Annexin A5 is a well explored probe to target phosphatidylserine (PS)-expressing cells in vivo. Our novel understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanism of annexin A5 as a cell-entry agent and the finding that PS is expressed on living tumour as well as endothelial cells in the tumour vasculature, will allow the development of lead compounds for anticancer therapy.