Cell adhesion molecules in oral mucosa.

The way in which cells communicate with each other is fundamentally important for developing and maintaining normal tissue structure and function. In order to get a better understanding of cell adhesion, researchers have long been trying to identify and characterize chemical structures at the cell surface that might participate in, or mediate, cell-cell and cell-matrix adhesion. During the last decade, this has led to the identification of a number of cell-surface adhesion proteins and their ligands, which may be either proteins or carbohydrates. The LEC cell-adhesion molecule family is a group of cell-adhesion molecules with a lectinlike domain. They bind to carbohydrate structures, some of which have been identified on dendritic cells in oral epithelium. LEC cell-adhesion molecules are found on endothelial cells during inflammation and may, in such situations, be involved in the recruiting of dendritic and other inflammatory cells, thereby playing a role in the regulation of inflammatory reactions in the oral mucosa. The integrin family is another group of cell-surface adhesion molecules recently identified in oral mucosa that participate in cell-matrix and cell-cell adhesion in many important processes including wound healing, immunodefense mechanisms, and oncogenic transformation. Knowledge of the distribution of cell-adhesion molecules and their ligands and of the mechanism that controls their expression is, therefore, of great importance in understanding of the development of disease in the oral mucosa.