[Research advance on adaptive immune therapy with natural killer cells--review].

Natural killer cells are important innate immune effector cells with broad applications in the treatment of malignancies due to its cytotoxicity against cancer cells without prior immune sensitization. Insight progress in the field of NK cell activating, inhibitory receptors and signals modulating NK cell activity has revolutionized our understanding of the selective killing of cancer cells by NK cells. Recently, much progress has been achieved in the field of NK cell purification and ex vivo expansion. NK cells were used both either directly or in combination with other treatment modalities in the transplantation and non transplantation settings. To strengthen the efficiency of NK cell for therapeutic aim, the biology of NK cells and crucial issues required to development more successful NK-cell-based therapies are discussed in this article.