Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease of the vessel wall characterized by monocyte infiltration in response to pro-atherogenic factors such as oxidized lipids. Recently, the role of specific adhesion molecules in this process has been explored. The endothelium overlying atherosclerotic lesions expresses P-selectin and the shoulder regions express vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) ...

Synopsis The chemical synapse is a specialized asymmetric adhesion site between the axon of a neuron and its target cell. Synapse formation is a multi-step process involving target recognition followed by reciprocal inductive interactions that result in recruitment of proteins, such as receptors, and organelles, such as synaptic vesicles, to both the presynaptic and postsynaptic compartments. S...

The CD44 proteins form a ubiquitously expressed family of cell surface adhesion molecules involved in cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions. The multiple protein isoforms are encoded by a single gene by alternative splicing and are further modified by a range of post-translational modifications. CD44 proteins are single chain molecules comprising an N-terminal extracellular domain, a membrane ...

Intraocular accumulation of inflammatory neutrophils is an important feature of experimental phacoanaphylactic endophthalmitis (EPE). Increasing evidence suggests that localization of neutrophils to the site of inflammation requires the participation of neutrophil and endothelial adhesion molecules. These studies were undertaken to determine if blocking of adhesion molecules on neutrophils (CD1...

Endothelial adhesion molecules play an important role in the tissue recruitment of leukocytes in inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. We have investigated the effect of the antirheumatic drug gold sodium thiomalate on adhesion molecule protein and mRNA expression in cultured human endothelial cells. Gold sodium thiomalate inhibited cytokine (TNF, IL-1, IL-4)-stimulated expressi...

Integrins are a class of cell adhesion molecules that participate in cell-cell and cell-substratum interactions and are present on essentially all human cells. The distribution of nine different a and ,f integrin subunits in human endometrial tissue at different stages of the menstrual cycle was determined using immunoperoxidase staining. Glandular epithelial cells expressed primarily a2, a3, a...

in the present study, variation among different bacterial strains was observed in the plaques of tobacco chewers (tc) as compared to those from normal persons (non tobacco chewers) (ntc). bacterial strain j1 (dominant in the plaques of ntc) did not initiate the process of adhesion (biofilm formation) until it appeared to have reached a required population density necessary for the production of...

Traditional medicine (a term used here to denote the indigenous health traditions of the world) and complementary and alternative medicine (T/CAM) have, in the past 10 years, claimed an increasing share of the public's awareness and the agenda of medical researchers. Studies have documented that about half the population of many industrialized countries now use T/CAM, and the proportion is as h...

1Institute for Molecular Cardiovascular Research, 2Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology, and 3Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research Biomat, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; 4Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; 5Institute for Biochemistry, Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany; and 6Cardiovascular Res...