Department of Biomedical Engineering, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA.
The matrix metalloproteinase family in humans comprises 23 enzymes, which are involved in many biological processes and diseases. It was previously thought that these enzymes acted only to degrade components of the extracellular matrix, but this view has changed with the discovery that non-extracellular-matrix molecules are also substrates.