The importance of the Mac-1, LFA-1 glycoprotein family in monocyte and granulocyte adherence, chemotaxis, and migration into inflammatory sites: insights from an experiment of nature.

The Mac-1, LFA-1 (lymphocyte function-associated 1), p150,95 family of glycoproteins, which share a common beta subunit of Mr 95 000, are of widespread importance in leucocyte adhesion reactions. This paper focuses on the role of this glycoprotein family in granulocyte and monocyte adhesion and chemotaxis in vitro, and in migration into inflammatory sites in vivo. Most findings have been made with granulocytes, but results with monocytes are similar. Some studies have used leucocytes from patients exhibiting a severe or moderate deficiency in expression of this glycoprotein family, which is secondary to a defect in the common beta subunit. Patients are susceptible to bacterial infections and have defective pus formation and Rebuck skin-window tests, despite chronic granulocytosis. Granulocytes from such patients exhibit defective adherence to serum albumin and fibronectin-coated glass or plastic, defective orientation and directed migration in response to chemoattractants, and are defective in chemoattractant-stimulated aggregation and hyperadherence. Antibodies to the common beta subunit, to the Mac-1 alpha subunit, and to a lesser extent to the LFA-1 and p150,95 alpha subunits, inhibit many of the same functional responses by normal cells. In normal granulocytes and monocytes chemoattractants stimulate a five-fold increase in Mac-1 and p150,95 surface expression, by mobilization of a latent, presumably intracellular, pool. Cells from patients are deficient in up-regulation of these molecules but show normal up-regulation of other surface receptors, degranulation and oxidative burst. The hypothesis is presented that Mac-1 and p150,95 regulate or directly mediate the increase in granulocyte and monocyte adhesivity, which is essential for diapedesis, chemotaxis and migration into inflammatory sites.