Attention has recently
been focused on the basal cells of the
tracheobronchial epithelium as the
mechanism of anchorage of the tall
columnar cells, which themselves do not
appear to form hemidesmosomes with
the basement membrane of the epithelium.
Residual basal cells have been described
as remaining attached to the
basement membrane after epithelial
denudation. This led this group to formulate
the hypothesis that there may be
a potential plane of cleavage between the
basal cells and the overlying columnar
cell layer within the bronchial epithelium,
which becomes disrupted in
asthma.peer-reviewe
