Search results for "nkg"

Methodological matters on an Alzheimer's dementia trial: is a double-blind randomized controlled study design sufficient to draw strong conclusions o…

2007

Efficient Killing of Human Colon Cancer Stem Cells by γδ T Lymphocytes

2009

Abstract Colon cancer comprises a small population of cancer stem cells (CSC) that is responsible for tumor maintenance and resistant to cancer therapies, possibly allowing for tumor recapitulation once treatment stops. We previously demonstrated that such chemoresistance is mediated by autocrine production of IL-4 through the up-regulation of antiapoptotic proteins. Several innate and adaptive immune effector cells allow for the recognition and destruction of cancer precursors before they constitute the tumor mass. However, cellular immune-based therapies have not been experimented yet in the population of CSCs. Here, we show that the bisphosphonate zoledronate sensitizes colon CSCs to Vγ9…

An unconventional TRAIL to cancer therapy

2013

Cellular immunotherapy offers novel, safe, and effective routes to treating cancer. However, approaches utilizing cytotoxic CD8+ T cells are hampered by the need to identify suitable target antigens that are expressed by tumor cells but not healthy tissues, and that are recognized with sufficient affinity. Most importantly, the applicability of CD8+ T-cell-based therapies is governed by the MHC restriction of tumor-specific epitopes, thereby limiting the potential benefit to patients carrying the appropriate MHC haplotype. Alternative approaches to harness the immune system against tumors exploit non-MHC-restricted γδ T cells that recognize stress-induced changes in transformed cells. A new…

Natural Killer Group 2D Ligand Depletion Reconstitutes Natural Killer Cell Immunosurveillance of Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

2017

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a highly heterogeneous and aggressive tumor originating from the epithelial lining of the upper aero-digestive tract accounting for 300,000 annual deaths worldwide due to failure of current therapies. The natural killer group 2D (NKG2D) receptors on natural killer (NK) cells and several T cell subsets play an important role for immunosurveillance of HNSCC and are thus targeted by tumor immune evasion strategies in particular by shedding of various NKG2D ligands (NKG2DLs). Based on plasma and tumor samples of 44 HNSCC patients, we found that despite compositional heterogeneity the total plasma level of NKG2DLs correlates with NK cell inhibitio…

Enhancing the Activation and Releasing the Brakes: A Double Hit Strategy to Improve NK Cell Cytotoxicity Against Multiple Myeloma

2018

Natural killer (NK) cells are innate lymphocytes with a strong antitumor ability. In tumor patients, such as multiple myeloma (MM) patients, an elevated number of NK cells after stem cell transplantation (SCT) has been reported to be correlated with a higher overall survival rate. With the aim of improving NK cell use for adoptive cell therapy, we also addressed the cytotoxicity of patient-derived, cytokine-stimulated NK cells against MM cells at specific time points: at diagnosis and before and after autologous stem cell transplantation. Remarkably, after cytokine stimulation, the patients' NK cells did not significantly differ from those of healthy donors. In a small cohort of MM patients…

Early evolutionary colocalization of the nuclear ribosomal 5S and 45S gene families in seed plants: evidence from the living fossil gymnosperm Ginkgo…

2012

In seed plants, the colocalization of the 5S loci within the intergenic spacer (IGS) of the nuclear 45S tandem units is restricted to the phylogenetically derived Asteraceae family. However, fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) colocalization of both multigene families has also been observed in other unrelated seed plant lineages. Previous work has identified colocalization of 45S and 5S loci in Ginkgo biloba using FISH, but these observations have not been confirmed recently by sequencing a 1.8 kb IGS. In this work, we report the presence of the 45S–5S linkage in G. biloba, suggesting that in seed plants the molecular events leading to the restructuring of the ribosomal loci are much o…