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Faculty Member John Couchman, of the University of Copenhagen Biotech Research and Innovation Centre, caught up with F1000 at the American Society for Cell Biology meeting last year in Denver, Colorado.

John explains his work into cell adhesion and interaction, in particular, a group of molecules known as ‘syndecans’. Syndecans act as co-receptors to integrin adhesion molecules and growth factors, and unravelling how they work could have important clinical implications, especially as the molecules’ connection to disease becomes more apparent.

Syndecans have been associated with various cancers and even inflammatory disease, such as arthritis. Thus, increasing our understanding of these relationships is an important area for future development.

Read John’s recent F1000 evaluation of a related paper on the regulation of integrin adhesion and force coupling which demonstrates that Ptdlns(4,5)P2, while common in cells, need to be locally generated at the adhesion organelle in order to be efficiently employed.