Selectins features

Sulfated galactans may interact with numerous regulatory proteins affording inhibition of complement activation, of tumor cell adhesion to P-selectin, of several matrix-degrading enzymes, and so on.668-670 These features depend strongly on the... 

These external neural influences on intestinal motility are common targets for prokinetic drugs, but events within the bowel can have important effects on intestinal motility and cause the bowel to be refractory to traditional prokinetic therapy. Release of cytokines from activated inflammatory cells is probably an important feature of ileus in many cases. Ileus secondary to reperfusion injury is an anticipated response in horses with small intestinal obstruction. However, even apparently mild intestinal injury can initiate cellular responses that lead to impaired motility. Mild intestinal insult by gentle surgical manipulation activated adhesion molecules on leukocytes and increased the expression of P-selectin and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 on endothelial cells within the vasculature of the muscularis layer of the intestine (Kalff et al 1999). Surgical manipulation of the rodent small intestine resulted in substantial extravasation of leukocytes into the intestinal muscularis, consisting mainly of polymorphonuclear neutrophils, monocytes and mast cells and lasting for days. This cellular inflammatory response within the intestinal muscularis externa was associated with a marked decrease in jejunal circular muscle activity (Kalff et al 1998). 

The term selectin was introduced to describe three adhesion molecules whose function and expression were highly selective and which possessed a terminal lectin domain. The nomenclature for each molecule relates to the cell on which they were first described E-selectin (endothelium), L-selectin (lymphocyte), and P-selectin (platelet). All three share similar structural features (1) an extracellular amino terminal carbohydrate-binding (i.e., lectin-like) domain that requires Ca2+ for activation (2) an epidermal growth factor-like domain and (3) repeated domains with homologies to complement-regulatoiy proteins. 

Although it is highly likely that the clinical effectiveness of anti-CDlla and anti-ICAM-1 antibodies in EAE will depend upon features of experimental design, e g., method of disease induction, and the stage and route of antibody administration, the overall impression from the current literature is that CD 11a and ICAM-1 are not major participants in the CNS extravasation of lymphocytes. It also appears that anti-L-selectin antibodies do not affect the clinical course of EAE.138... 

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