Migratory properties of IL-2 and IL-15 activated Natural Killer Cells in Dendritic Cells and tumor microenvironments

• Main Author: Sow, Ibrahim
• Other Authors: Kung, Sam (Immunology)
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: IMMUNOLOGY
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/31264

Recent work on Natural Killer (NK)-Dendritic cell (DC) crosstalk has focused on how NK-DC interaction can lead to NK activation, DC activation, NK-DC reciprocal activation, apoptosis and other effector functions. The significance of the NK-DC crosstalk in both physiological and pathological conditions is well documented. However, the way in which NK-DC interaction helps in NK recruitment has not been studied in detail. Using a conventional Trans-well (TW) assay and a microfluidic (MF) platform in vitro, we recently reported on the migratory properties of IL-2 activated NK cells in response to conditioned media, CM, from immature or LPS-stimulated mature DC. In this present study as well, I employed the trans-well and the Microfluidic device to compare the migration of different cytokine activated NK towards the Conditioned media generated from DC activated with different Toll like receptor ligands, TLRLs. I observed that different TLRLs stimulated DC elicit strong NK chemotaxis but at different recruitment potentials. Also, the different cytokine activated NK cells showed different migration capacity towards the different CM generated from DC. I accounted for the differential migration pattern between the IL-2 and IL-15 NK on the differential expression of CXCR3. Good understanding of how NK-cell migratory properties are regulated in physiological and pathological microenvironments will provide further (good) insights into the development of NK cell based therapeutic against cancer. === May 2016