Leukocyte trafficking from bloodstream to tissue is important for the continuous surveillance for foreign antigens as well as for rapid leukocyte accumulation at sites of inflammatory response or tissue injury. Leukocyte interaction with vascular endothelial cells is a pivotal event in the inflammatory response and is mediated by several families of adhesion molecules. The crucial role of the b...

The kindlin (or fermitin) family of proteins comprises three members (kindlin-1,-2 and -3) of evolutionarily conserved focal adhesion (FA) proteins, whose best-known task is to increase integrin affinity for a ligand (also referred as integrin activation) through binding of β-integrin tails. The consequence of kindlin-mediated integrin activation and integrin-ligand binding is cell adhesion, sp...

In this issue, Willenbrock et al. (1) address how leukocytes achieve deceleration during rolling and arrest on endothelium in the vasculature near tissue sites of inflammatory insult. While cell capture from the blood stream and rolling is largely the functional domain of selectin adhesion receptors that are constitutively expressed on leukocytes and rapidly deployed on endothelium to bind glyc...

Kindlin-3 is an integrin-binding focal adhesion adaptor absent in patients with leukocyte and platelet adhesion deficiency syndrome and is critical for firm integrin-dependent leukocyte adhesion. The role of this adaptor in leukocyte diapedesis has never been investigated. In the present study, the functions of Kindlin-3 in this process were investigated in effector T lymphocytes trafficking to...

Leukocyte adhesion deficiency (LAD) I is a well-described genetic disorder in which leukocytes are unable to migrate to sites of inflammation due to mutations in the ITGB2 gene coding for the β subunit of β2 (CD18) leukocyte integrins. The classic symptoms of the disease present in the newborn period as failure of separation of the umbilical cord and recurrent bacterial infections, which contin...

Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency (LAD) is characterized by the inability of leukocytes, in particular neutrophilic granulocytes, to emigrate from the blood stream towards sites of inflammation. Infectious foci are nonpurulent and may eventually become necrotic because of abnormal wound healing. LAD-I is characterized by the absence of the beta-2 integrins CD II and CD 18 on leukocytes. We present ...