ABSTRACT
Cell adhesion is a broad area of study that is concerned with the manner in which cells interact and bind with one another and to the extracellular matrix (ECM). Cellmatrix and cell-cell adhesion are crucial mechanical phenomena in biology and are central in several basic aspects of cell function, including growth [1], differentiation [2] and migration [3]. Biological processes in which cell adhesion plays a major
role include tissue development [4], wound healing [5] and immune response [6]. In addition, changes in cell adhesion accompany many pathological events, such as cancer metastasis [7] and the development of leukemia [8]. Finally, controlling cell adhesion is essential for the proper function of biomaterials [9, 10] and biosensors [11], and is central to the rapidly growing fields of tissue engineering [12] and stem cells [13].
