This inhibitory effect was also consistent with the effect of small glycoproteins (e.g., MUC15) in resisting the development of certain cancers,[17, 18, 20, 21, 35] yet contrasted sharply with their role in promoting the development of other cancers.[13, 15, 36] To investigate why small glycoproteins act differently in distinct cell types, we tested the hypothesis that small glycoproteins affect integrin clustering differently depending upon the intrinsic integrin binding rate, kon0. This evidence concerns the gene MUC15 and cancer.