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 anti-cancer therapy.