  Early speculations about the existence of heavy hadron molecules were
grounded on the idea that light-meson exchanges forces could lead to binding.
In analogy to the deuteron, the light-mesons usually considered include the
pion, sigma, rho and omega, but not the axial meson $a_1(1260)$. Though it has
been argued in the past that the coupling of the axial meson to the nucleons is
indeed strong, its mass is considerably heavier than that of the vector mesons
and thus its exchange ends up being suppressed. Yet, this is not necessarily
the case in heavy hadrons molecules: we find that even though the contribution
to binding from the axial meson is modest, it cannot be neglected in the
isovector sector where vector meson exchange cancels out. This might provide a
natural binding mechanism for molecular candidates such as the $Z_c(3900)$,
$Z_c(4020)$ or the more recently observed $Z_{cs}(3985)$. However the
$Z_{cs}(3985)$ is much more dependent on the nature of scalar meson exchange
(in particular whether the sigma has a sizable coupling to the strange quark)
than on the contribution of the axial mesons. This later observation might also
be relevant for the strange hidden-charm pentaquark $P_{cs}(4459)$.
