“…While many of these studies have been conducted in cultured human cancer cells which often overexpress these mucins, these functions are likely to relate to protecting mucosal epithelia from mucosal cytotoxins including toxins made by pathogens to damage epithelial integrity Sheng et al, 2011). MUC1, MUC3, MUC4, MUC13, and MUC17 also modulate epithelial growth, and some of these mucins have been shown to interact with the c-erb family of growth factor receptors (Schroeder et al, 2001;Carraway et al, 2002;Ho et al, 2006;Luu et al, 2010). MUC1 and MUC13 also modulate inflammatory signaling by mucosal epithelial cells, although interestingly, these mucins have opposing effects, with MUC1 suppressing and MUC13 enhancing inflammatory signaling in response to TLR and NOD ligands (Guang et al, 2010;Sheng et al, 2012b).…”