Fasbender Frank, Widera Agata, Hengstler Jan G, Watzl Carsten
Department for Immunology, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors (IfADo), Technische Universität Dortmund , Dortmund , Germany.
Department for Toxicology, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors (IfADo), Technische Universität Dortmund , Dortmund , Germany.
Front Immunol. 2016 Jan 29;7:19. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2016.00019. eCollection 2016.
In the 40 years since the discovery of natural killer (NK) cells, it has been well established that these innate lymphocytes are important for early and effective immune responses against transformed cells and infections with different pathogens. In addition to these classical functions of NK cells, we now know that they are part of a larger family of innate lymphoid cells and that they can even mediate memory-like responses. Additionally, tissue-resident NK cells with distinct phenotypical and functional characteristics have been identified. Here, we focus on the phenotype of different NK cell subpopulations that can be found in the liver and summarize the current knowledge about the functional role of these cells with a special emphasis on liver fibrosis. NK cell cytotoxicity can contribute to liver damage in different forms of liver disease. However, NK cells can limit liver fibrosis by killing hepatic stellate cell-derived myofibroblasts, which play a key role in this pathogenic process. Therefore, liver NK cells need to be tightly regulated in order to balance these beneficial and pathological effects.
自发现自然杀伤（NK）细胞以来的40年里，人们已经充分认识到这些先天淋巴细胞对于针对转化细胞和不同病原体感染的早期有效免疫反应至关重要。除了NK细胞的这些经典功能外，我们现在知道它们是更大的先天淋巴细胞家族的一部分，甚至可以介导类似记忆的反应。此外，已经鉴定出具有独特表型和功能特征的组织驻留NK细胞。在这里，我们重点关注肝脏中可以发现的不同NK细胞亚群的表型，并总结关于这些细胞功能作用的当前知识，特别强调肝纤维化。NK细胞的细胞毒性可导致不同形式肝病中的肝损伤。然而，NK细胞可以通过杀死在这一致病过程中起关键作用的肝星状细胞衍生的肌成纤维细胞来限制肝纤维化。因此，肝脏NK细胞需要受到严格调控，以平衡这些有益和病理效应。
