Adoptively transferred natural killer cells maintain long-term antitumor activity by epigenetic imprinting and CD4⁺ T cell help.

ABSTRACT: Natural killer (NK) cell infusions can induce remissions in subsets of patients with different types of cancer. The optimal strategies for NK cell activation prior to infusion are still under debate. There is recent evidence that NK cells can acquire long-term functional competence by preactivation with the cytokines IL-12/15/18. The mechanisms supporting the maintenance of long-term NK cell antitumor activity are incompletely under-stood. Here, we show that NK cells preactivated in vitro with IL-12/15/18, but not with IL-15 alone, maintained high antitumor activity even 1 mo after transfer into lymphopenic RAG-2^-/-γc^-/- mice. The NK cell intrinsic ability for IFNγ production coincided with demethylation of the conserved non-coding sequence (CNS) 1 in the If

SUBMITTER: Ni J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5048776 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature