Vascular homing peptides with cell-penetrating properties.

In vivo screening of phage-displayed peptide libraries has revealed extensive molecular heterogeneity in the blood vessels of individual normal tissues and shown that pathological lesions put their signature on the vasculature. In tumors, both blood and lymphatic vessels differ from normal vessels. Moreover, the molecular changes in the vasculature parallel progression in tumor development, hence making the vessels in premalignant lesions distinguishable from normal vessels and from the vessels in malignant tumors of the same tissue. Some of the tumor-homing peptides penetrate into tumor endothelial cells (and tumor cells), but not into endothelial cells in normal tissues or other normal cells. Thus, these cell-penetrating peptides are cell type-specific. Peptides that home to tumor vasculature have been shown to be useful in directing therapeutic agents to experimental tumors. The cell penetrating peptides may be particularly useful in drug delivery because they can take their payload inside the target cells and even into a specific subcellular organelle such as the nucleus.