Table 1.

The vascular homing peptides and recombinant proteins used. For targeting experiments, the FITC dye was coupled to the synthesized CAR and mCAR (mutant CAR peptide) peptides. For recombinant protein expression, the homing peptide CAR or mutant CAR (mCAR) was cloned to the C-terminal end of human decorin (DCN). An epitope tag of 6-histidines was also added for purification to the molecule following the CAR sequence. The recombinant proteins were expressed in mammalian expression system and purified by chromatography.

Name	Peptides & Recombinant Proteins
CAR	CARSKNKDC
mCAR	CAQSNNKDC
DCN	5′-hDCN—HHHHHH-3′
CAR-DCN	5′-hDCN—CARSKNKDC—HHHHHH-3′
mCAR-DCN	5′-hDCN—CAQSNNKDC—HHHHHH-3′