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Abstract
Natural Killer (NK)-cells are peripheral blood lymphocytes that represent an important arm of the innate immune system. NK-cells play a critical role in the immune surveillance against tumors and virally infected cells in a major histocompatibiliy complex (MHC)-unrestricted fashion. We have explored such capacities of NK-cells after differentiation from hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells derived from human umbilical cord blood. Several culture conditions have been established supporting proliferation and subsequent differentiation of these cells in terms of receptor expression and specific lysis depending on the growth conditions in the presence and absence of supportive stromal feeders. We show that acquisition of Killer Immunoglobulin Receptor (KIR) as well as NK Cytotoxicity Receptor expressions is independent of culture condition whereas absence of stromal feeders did not support acquisition of CD94/NKG2A expression. Such KIR-positive/NKG2A-negative cells generated under different culture conditions showed strong and specific cytolytic activity which could have impact on further immunotherapeutic strategies.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Gynecology and Obstetrics staff of Júlio Dinis Maternity, Porto, Portugal, for human umbilical cord blood collection, the North Regional Division of the Portuguese Institute of Blood, for supplying blood collection bags, the Department of Immunology, St John Hospital, for technical support in cytometry experiments, and the Department of Radiotherapy, St John Hospital, Porto, Portugal, for technical support in radiation experiments. We would like to thank Joana Marques (PhD) for her friendship, encouragement and kindness to check the use of English in the manuscript. This work was partially financially supported by FCT (POCTI/SAU-MMO/60709/04, 60555/4, 59997/04, UMIB)
Declaration of Interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.