The Concern Foundation Laboratories at the Lautenberg Center for Immunology and Cancer Research, Hebrew University Medical School, IMRIC, Jerusalem, Israel.
Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Nat Commun. 2024 Oct 7;15(1):8664. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-52913-2.
NKG2D is a central activating receptor involved in target recognition and killing by Natural Killer and CD8 T cells. The known role of NKG2D is to recognize a family of self-induced stress ligands that are upregulated on stressed cells such as cancerous or virally infected cells. Fungal pathogens are a major threat to human health, infecting more than a billion patients yearly and becoming more common and drug resistant. Here we show that NKG2D plays a critical role in the immune response against fungal infections. NKG2D can recognize fungal pathogens from most major families including Candida, Cryptococcus and Aspergillus species, and mice lacking NKG2D are extremely sensitive to fungal infections in models of both invasive and mucosal infections, making NKG2D an anti-fungal pattern recognition receptor.
NKG2D 是一种中央激活受体，参与自然杀伤细胞和 CD8 T 细胞的靶标识别和杀伤。NKG2D 的已知作用是识别一系列自我诱导的应激配体，这些配体在上皮细胞（如癌细胞或病毒感染细胞）受到应激时上调。真菌病原体是对人类健康的主要威胁，每年感染超过 10 亿患者，并且变得越来越普遍和耐药。在这里，我们表明 NKG2D 在针对真菌感染的免疫反应中起着关键作用。NKG2D 可以识别来自大多数主要真菌家族的真菌病原体，包括念珠菌、隐球菌和曲霉菌，并且缺乏 NKG2D 的小鼠在侵袭性和黏膜感染模型中对真菌感染极为敏感，这使得 NKG2D 成为一种抗真菌模式识别受体。
