Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Yokohama City University School of Medicine, Yokohama, Japan.
Molecular Immunogenetics and Vaccine Research Section, Vaccine Branch, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States.
Front Immunol. 2018 Feb 22;9:314. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2018.00314. eCollection 2018.
Natural killer T (NKT) cells are a unique T cell subset that exhibits characteristics from both the innate immune cells and T cells. There are at least two subsets of NKT cells, type I and type II. These two subsets of NKT cells have opposite functions in antitumor immunity. Type I NKT cells usually enhance and type II NKT cells suppress antitumor immunity. In addition, these two subsets of NKT cells cross-regulate each other. In this review, we mainly focus on immunosuppressive NKT cells, type II NKT cells. After summarizing their definition, experimental tools to study them, and subsets of them, we will discuss possible therapeutic applications of type II NKT cell pathway targeted therapies.
自然杀伤 T（NKT）细胞是一种独特的 T 细胞亚群，兼具先天免疫细胞和 T 细胞的特征。至少存在两种 NKT 细胞亚群，即 I 型和 II 型。这两种 NKT 细胞亚群在抗肿瘤免疫中具有相反的功能。I 型 NKT 细胞通常增强，而 II 型 NKT 细胞抑制抗肿瘤免疫。此外，这两种 NKT 细胞亚群相互调节。在这篇综述中，我们主要关注具有免疫抑制作用的 NKT 细胞，即 II 型 NKT 细胞。在总结了它们的定义、研究它们的实验工具以及它们的亚群之后，我们将讨论针对 II 型 NKT 细胞途径的靶向治疗的可能治疗应用。
