Kaiserlian D, Bardos P, Bach J F
Cell Immunol. 1983 Mar;76(2):232-42. doi: 10.1016/0008-8749(83)90366-0.
Previous studies indicated that the serum thymic factor (FTS) could modulate in vivo the level of splenic natural killer (NK) cell activity in mice. The present report shows that such an effect is also observed after a short term in vitro incubation of the effector cells with FTS. The regulatory effects of FTS result in an increase or a decrease of the splenic NK cell cytotoxicity depending upon the age and the mouse strain. Furthermore, FTS is able to enhance the NK cell activity of thymus and bone marrow cells which are known to be weakly reactive in NK cytotoxicity. Depletion experiments demonstrated that the FTS-induced increase of NK cell activity was not mediated by Thy 1+ cells nor macrophages, thus suggesting a direct action of FTS on the effector cells. Comparative studies using other thymic hormones revealed similar patterns of reactivity. These results favor the hypothesis of a close relationship between the thymus and NK cells.
以往的研究表明，血清胸腺因子（FTS）可在体内调节小鼠脾脏自然杀伤（NK）细胞的活性水平。本报告显示，效应细胞与FTS进行短期体外培养后，也可观察到这种效应。FTS的调节作用会导致脾脏NK细胞的细胞毒性增加或降低，这取决于小鼠的年龄和品系。此外，FTS能够增强胸腺和骨髓细胞的NK细胞活性，而胸腺和骨髓细胞在NK细胞毒性方面的反应较弱。去除实验表明，FTS诱导的NK细胞活性增加不是由Thy 1+细胞或巨噬细胞介导的，因此提示FTS对效应细胞有直接作用。使用其他胸腺激素的对比研究显示出类似的反应模式。这些结果支持胸腺与NK细胞之间存在密切关系这一假说。
