ABSTRACT
Inhibitors of cell adhesion may again be acting directly or indirectly. It should be realized that almost any molecule at the cell’s interface with the environment is potentially either a molecule which will be adhesive or one which will diminish adhesion. The majority of methods for measuring cell adhesion require the separation of a tissue into individual cells, inhibition of whatever process is used to obtain this dissociation, and then the formation of adhesions either between cells or between cells and nonliving substrates. When adhesions are formed, the cell usually may extend its area of contact on the contact surface over an appreciable time interval. One of the main areas of deficiency in our understanding of cell adhesion lies in the correlation of mechanisms of adhesion and the expected strengths of adhesion. The various methods used to study adhesions have for the most part short time scales on the order of 1 to 10 min.
