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Metabolic Tracing Reveals IL-2 Driven Glutaminolysis and De Novo Pyrimidine Synthesis in Human Natural Killer Cells

ABSTRACT: Natural Killer (NK) cells are innate lymphocytes that are key to intrinsic cancer immunosurveillance and an important target for cancer immunotherapy. Understanding fundamental human NK cell metabolism provides opportunities for optimising NK cell therapies. Little is known about how glutamine, an important cell nutrient and carbon source, is utilised by human NK cells. To address this, we performed U13C-glutamine tracing experiments by Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (LCMS) and Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) analysis of human NK cells stimulated with IL-2 for 18 hours to provide a global overview of glutamine usage by these cells. Our results show that glutamine is taken up by resting NK cells and that this increases further upon IL-2 stimulation. Metabolite labelling analysis identified that IL-2 results in greater conversion of glutamine to glutamate, allowing for anaplerotic flux into the TCA cycle. The fate of the glutamine-derived carbons diverged at oxaloacetate (OAA) allowing both bioenergetic and biosynthetic outcomes - some carbons continued around the TCA cycle while others were exported, converted to aspartate and subsequently used for pyrimidine synthesis. Nucleotide synthesis by IL-2 activated NK cells was found to be essential for expression of the activation marker CD69. The data indicate that glutamine is a key nutrient taken up by human NK cells, and that IL-2 drives glutaminolysis. Subsequent glutamate is used to support the TCA cycle, generating energy and providing intermediates for de novo pyrimidine synthesis.

INSTRUMENT(S):

ORGANISM(S): Homo Sapiens (human)

TISSUE(S): Blood

SUBMITTER: Andrew Howden

LAB HEAD: Professor Clair Gardiner

PROVIDER: PXD076428 | Pride | 2026-04-01

REPOSITORIES: Pride

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Project description:Ex vivo activation and expansion of natural killer (NK) cells is a strategy to produce sufficient numbers of these effector cells for adoptive immunotherapy. Therefore we aimed at the development of an automated, clinical scale NK cell expansion process and compared NK cells after manual and automated expansion.We found only a small subset of 124 genes that significantly varied between both sample groups. These genes were associated with movement of leukocytes were identified including a group of genes for NK cell movement (CMKLR1, CX3CR1, S1PR5, GNLY and CXCR1) which were slightly higher expressed after automated compared to manual expansion. Nevertheless, the expansion profiles of NK cells after automated or manual expansion were rather similar in comparison to the remarkable difference between primary and expanded NK cells in general represented by the vast majority of regulated genes between the analyzed sample groups. Pathway analysis revealed that most of regulated genes upon expansion were associated with cell cycle regulation, DNA replication, DNA recombination and DNA repair, regulation of apoptosis and cell survival as well as cytokine signaling. Furthermore, the expression of many NK cell relevant markers was changed upon expansion with the strongest effects on up regulation of TRAIL and FASL, inhibitory TIGIT and chemokine receptors CCR2, CCR5 and CXCR6. In addition, granzyme M was down regulated but other important effector molecules like TNFa, perforin and granzymes A, B and K were up regulated. In summary we could show that manual and automatically expanded NK cells show a similar expansion profile while the differ significantly from primary NK cells. Up regulation of many NK cell relevant markers indicate for an enhanced NK cell functionaility after ex vivo activation and expansion. 24 samples were analyzed in total. 6 biological replicates represented by cells from different donors. 4 different samples per donor: freshly isolated NK cells (d0) and NK cells expanded for 14 days under 3 different conditions: in co-culture with EBV-LCL feeder cells and 500 U/mL IL2 either cultivated manually in T75 flasks (T) or automatically using the CliniMACS Prodigy system (P); NK cells cultured with 500 U/ml IL2 without feeder cells (I)

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Metabolic Tracing Reveals IL-2 Driven Glutaminolysis and De Novo Pyrimidine Synthesis in Human Natural Killer Cells

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