Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.
Nat Rev Immunol. 2011 Feb;11(2):131-42. doi: 10.1038/nri2904.
Natural killer T (NKT) cells are important regulatory lymphocytes that have been shown in mouse studies, to have a crucial role in promoting immunity to tumours, bacteria and viruses, and in suppressing cell-mediated autoimmunity. Many clinical studies have indicated that NKT cell deficiencies and functional defects might also contribute to similar human diseases, although there is no real consensus about the nature of the NKT cell defects or whether NKT cells could be important for the diagnosis and/or treatment of these conditions. In this Review, we describe the approaches that have been used to analyse the NKT cell populations of various patient groups, suggest new strategies to determine how (or indeed, if) NKT cell defects contribute to human disease, and discuss the prospects for using NKT cells for therapeutic benefit.
自然杀伤 T（NKT）细胞是重要的调节性淋巴细胞，在小鼠研究中已经表明，它们在促进对肿瘤、细菌和病毒的免疫以及抑制细胞介导的自身免疫方面起着至关重要的作用。许多临床研究表明，NKT 细胞缺陷和功能缺陷也可能导致类似的人类疾病，尽管对于 NKT 细胞缺陷的性质以及 NKT 细胞是否对这些疾病的诊断和/或治疗有重要作用，尚无真正的共识。在这篇综述中，我们描述了用于分析各种患者群体的 NKT 细胞群体的方法，提出了新的策略来确定 NKT 细胞缺陷如何（或是否）导致人类疾病，并讨论了利用 NKT 细胞获得治疗益处的前景。
