The mechanism of action of angiostatin: can you teach an old dog new tricks?

What is angiostatin? In 1994, Folkman and colleagues published a landmark paper describing anti-tumor effects in mice with a purified fragment of plasminogen they named angiostatin (1). Although many papers have been published describing activities of cryptic polypeptides derived from plasminogen fragments, this was the first report which associated plasminogen kringles 1-4 as a suppressor of metastasis development. This review will describe what is known about the mechanism of action of angiostatin from the current literature.