This finding, published in the open access journal Open Biology, highlights that chemokines and GAGs mutually influence each other. The ability to cross-link GAGs implies that the functions of chemokines may not simply be confined to the activation of cognate cellular receptors. Instead, chemokines may cluster other GAG-presenting cellular receptors and promote signalling in new ways that were not previously anticipated. Furthermore, remodelling of GAG-rich pericellular matrices by cross-linking GAGs may represent an additional function related to the importance of chemokine-GAG interactions during immune cell migration in vivo.
This was supported by the Chair of Excellence Project “GAG2D”, a collaborative project between the Richter Lab and four research groups in Grenoble, funded by the Nanoscience Foundation (Grenoble, France), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and the European Research Council.