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Extrinsic and intrinsic regulation of early natural killer cell development

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Abstract

Natural killer (NK) cells are lymphocytes that play a critical role in both adaptive and innate immune responses. These cells develop from multipotent progenitors in the embryonic thymus and neonatal or adult bone marrow and recent evidence suggests that a subset of these cells may develop in the thymus. Thymus- and bone marrow-derived NK cells have unique phenotypes and functional abilities supporting the hypothesis that the microenvironment dictates the outcome of NK cell development. A detailed understanding of the mechanisms controlling this developmental program will be required to determine how alterations in NK cell development lead to disease and to determine how to harness this developmental program for therapeutic purposes. In this review, we discuss some of the known extrinsic stromal-cell derived factors and cell intrinsic transcription factors that function in guiding NK cell development.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the members of our laboratory and Stephen Nutt for insightful discussion and helpful comments on this manuscript. Work from our lab was supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute R01 CA099978.

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  1. Committees on Immunology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Markus D. Boos, Kevin Ramirez & Barbara L. Kee

  2. Cancer Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Barbara L. Kee

  3. Developmental Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, 60637, IL, USA

    Barbara L. Kee

  4. Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago, 5841 S. Maryland Ave., MC 1089, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Barbara L. Kee

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  1. Markus D. Boos
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Correspondence to Barbara L. Kee.

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Boos, M.D., Ramirez, K. & Kee, B.L. Extrinsic and intrinsic regulation of early natural killer cell development. Immunol Res 40, 193–207 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12026-007-8006-9

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