Epithelial barrier function: at the front line of asthma immunology and allergic airway inflammation

SN Georas, F Rezaee - Journal of allergy and clinical immunology, 2014 - Elsevier
Airway epithelial cells form a barrier to the outside world and are at the front line of mucosal
immunity. Epithelial apical junctional complexes are multiprotein subunits that promote cell-
cell adhesion and barrier integrity. Recent studies in the skin and gastrointestinal tract
suggest that disruption of cell-cell junctions is required to initiate epithelial immune
responses, but how this applies to mucosal immunity in the lung is not clear. Increasing
evidence indicates that defective epithelial barrier function is a feature of airway …