The laminins: a family of basement membrane glycoproteins important in cell differentiation and tumor metastases.

Laminins are a family of basement membrane-derived glycoproteins that are very biologically active with a number of diverse cell types. The response of the cells is dependent on the cell type and various cell-specific intracellular events are activated. Multiple active sites on laminin and cellular receptors have been described. Both laminin and the synthetic peptides that define the active sites may have important clinical uses. For example, the neurite-promoting peptides may be useful in vivo in regeneration studies because of their potent activity with neural cells and their lack of antigenicity. Also, peptides, such as YIGSR, that inhibit angiogenesis are potentially useful for treating the vascularization of the eye that occurs in conditions such as diabetes mellitus. Likewise, the angiogenic peptide SIKVAV, because of its role in endothelial cell block vessel formation, may be useful for treating ischemia. The recent progress that has been made in characterizing basic mechanisms of action of laminin has laid the groundwork for more direct studies of its clinical relevance.