Table 1.

The role of IgSF members in the metastatic cascade.

Stages in metastasis	Involvement of IgSF members
	Known role	Potential role
(1) Cell proliferation in primary tumour
(i) Apoptotic	NCAM [24]	MCAM [27, 28]
evasion	ALCAM [29]
(ii) Angiogenesis	PECAM-1 [30, 31]	VCAM [32]
	ICAM-1 [33, 34]
(2) Local cell invasion
	MCAM [8, 35, 36]
(i) Cell-cell	ALCAM [37]
interactions	L1CAM [14, 38]
		ICAM-1 [40]
(ii) Directional cell		VCAM-1 [40]
migration and cell	MCAM [39]	PECAM-1 [41]
polarity		NCAM [27]
		MCAM [25, 42, 43]
		L1-CAM [44]
(iii) Matrix	MCAM [35, 36, 45]	ALCAM [46]
degradation	NCAM [47]
(3) Intravasation and dissemination		MCAM [48]
		ALCAM [49]
(4) Extravasation		MCAM [8, 35, 36]
		ALCAM [14, 37]
		NCAM [50]
		L1CAM [38, 51, 52]
		PECAM-1 [53, 54]
(5) Colonization and proliferation	As for (1) and (2)	As for (1) and (2)
(6) Immunological escape		MCAM [8, 36]
		ALCAM [14, 37]
		NCAM [50]