Interestingly, our data further revealed that functional response

Interestingly, our data further revealed that functional responses to non-specific pro-inflammatory cytokine stimulation were comparable among HC and asymptomatic Tx patients. Conversely, EBV-specific stimulation resulted in different

levels of IFN-γ and CD107a responses in these same cohorts, indicating a role of recall EBV-antigen stimulation in shaping anti-viral NK-cell function independently of Type-1 promoting cytokine stimulation. Indeed, recent reports have demonstrated that although still acknowledged as members of innate immunity, NK cells also possess nearly all the features of adaptive T-cell immunity 22, 23. Using a murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) model of viral infection, long-lived MCMV-specific memory NK cells displayed enhanced capacity to produce IFN-γ and degranulate upon re-encounter selleck kinase inhibitor with murine CMV, as compared with the resting NK cells from naïve mice 22, 23. The Ly49H receptor was responsible for this NK-cell MCMV-cognate recognition, and appeared not to recognize other viral antigens 22. Future work is therefore needed to elucidate

whether viral (including EBV) recognition by human NK cells is mediated by a single common receptor or by multiple viral antigen-specific receptors. Our results have further identified significant and broad (IFN-γ and CD107a) Topoisomerase inhibitor functional impairment of NK cells from PTLD patients both in response to non-specific and to EBV antigen-specific stimulation. NK cells from asymptomatic HVL carriers displayed similar trends, suggesting Amoxicillin a progressive loss of NK-cell functions (exhaustion) in these patients that parallels

the increased EBV-antigenic load, and with cytotyoxicity being affected early. These NK-cell functional data resemble the functional features of exhausted viral-specific CD8+ T cells identified during chronic high viral load infections, with IFN-γ being the last function maintained by Ag-specific T cells 24. Furthermore, our results identified the decreased expression of NKp46 and NKG2D and concomitant up-regulation of PD-1 on NK cells from EBV viremic PTLD patients as potential regulatory mechanisms responsible for the NK-cell functional abnormalities. The decreased expression of activating NCRs was previously described in chronic viremic (HIV- and HCV-) patients, and was shown to lead to significant NK-cell functional impairment of cytolytic activity and IFN-γ release 25, 26. In another study, down-regulation of NKG2D activation pathways provided Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus with a mechanism for evasion of NK-cell efficient viral clearance 27. The mechanisms leading to decreased NK-cell triggering receptors on NK cells from viremic patients are not entirely clear.

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