Genetic regulation on ex vivo differentiated natural killer cells from human umbilical cord blood CD34+ cells.

Natural killer (NK)-cells are a lymphocyte population playing a critical role in the immune surveillance against tumors and virally infected cells. The development of human hematopoietic stem cells (hHSC) into fully differentiated NK-cells pass through discrete stages of differentiation involving a variety of factors such as cytokines, membrane factors, and transcription factors (TFs). Because there is lack of studies in this field, we decided to perform an extended analysis of TFs during in vitro differentiation of NK-cells. At several points of differentiation, cells were characterized by their mRNA expression either for NK-cell cell markers, for a number of mature NK-cell receptors or a large panel of TFs. Our data suggests that some TFs (ID2, EGR-2 and T-BET) play a role in NK-cell commitment, differentiation and maturation. Although delayed on its expression, BLIMP1 also seems to be involved in differentiation and maturation of NK cells, but not in NK-cell commitment. E4BP4 and TOX are more related with initial stages of NK-cell commitment. PU.1, MEF, Ikaros, EGR-1, BCL11B and IRF-2 revealed less involvement in maturation and were more associated with NK-cell commitment and pNK cell production. GATA-3 showed a differential role during the ontogeny of NK-cells. We show that assessment of the transcripts present in the differentiating NK-cells demonstrated, a pattern of preserved and differential gene expression remarkably similar to that seen in mice except for E4BP4 that showed constant downregulation throughout the culture period. A thorough understanding of NK-cell developmental mechanisms is important as it may enable future therapeutic manipulation.