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Review

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 3, 932–943 (1 December 2002) | doi:10.1038/nrm977

uPAR: a versatile signalling orchestrator

Francesco Blasi & Peter Carmeliet

The plasminogen system has been implicated in clot lysis, wound healing, tissue regeneration, cancer and many other processes that affect health and disease. The urokinase receptor uPAR was originally thought to assist the directional invasion of migrating cells, but it is now becoming increasingly evident that this proteinase receptor elicits a plethora of cellular responses that include cellular adhesion, differentiation, proliferation and migration in a non-proteolytic fashion.