Although the reasons for blood vessel heterogeneity are still largely unclear, this diversity can be used to target the delivery of diagnostic and therapeutic agents to specific organs and to sites of disease such as tumors. The complex molecular diversity of blood vessels is only starting to be understood. We found small protein fragments that can home to normal blood vessels or sites of angiogenesis through the circulation via this vascular recognition system. Every normal or diseased organ appears to display a unique signature on its blood vessels that our probes can use as a target. We have also developed complementary methods of assessing the distribution of probes targeted to the vasculature, their organ-specificity, and their target cells.
Cancer is a common and often devastating disease.
We are designing specific molecular probes that use the vascular address system to home to tumors, and we are developing targeted anticancer drugs and tumor imaging techniques that take advantage of this homing. Other probes that have been developed or are under development can deliver treatments or imaging agents to normal organs or to diseased organs in conditions such as arthritis or retinal disorders. Our research is aimed at targeting diagnostic and therapeutic agents to tumor blood vessels by using probes that can bind to these specific addresses. The phage are injected into the blood of mice, and then the ones that bind to tumor blood vessels are isolated. This technology, called in vivo phage display, is now being used to identify the unique molecular addresses of vessels in human cancers.