Helping Natural Killers To Fight Cancer

Natural killer (NK) cells are key components of the innate immune system, tasked with eliminating infected, stressed, and tumor cells. They recognize these abnormal cells by the absence of major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) molecules, which mark healthy cells. NK cells, however, can become dysfunctional due to anergy, where NK cells originally fail to recognize target cells, or from exhaustion, resulting from chronic stimulation, such as in prolonged inflammation, rendering them less effective. Inactive NK cells can be found in the immediate microenvironment of tumors, which eliminates their anti-cancer function. In an article published in The EMBO Journal, Prof. Mira Barda-Saad and her team explore the similarities between exhausted and anergic states in tumor-infiltrating NK cells, and identify the proteins Egr2 and DGKα as common negative regulators controlling NK cell dysfunction. In addition, the researchers present a nanoparticle-based drug delivery platform for the reprogramming of these inactive NK cells.