NK Cell Therapy: A Rising Star in Cancer Treatment.
Nawen DuFeifei GuoYufeng WangJiu-Wei CuiPublished in: Cancers (2021)
Immunotherapy has become a robust and routine treatment strategy for patients with cancer; however, there are efficacy and safety issues that should be resolved. Natural killer (NK) cells are important innate immune cells that have attracted increasing attention owing to their major histocompatibility complex-independent immunosurveillance ability. These cells provide the first-line defense against carcinogenesis and are closely related to cancer development. However, NK cells are functionally suppressed owing to multiple immunosuppressive factors in the tumor microenvironment; thus, releasing the suppressed state of NK cells is an emergent project and a promising solution for immunotherapy. As a result, many clinical trials of NK cell therapy alone or in combination with other agents are currently underway. This review describes the current status of NK cell therapy for cancer treatment based on the effector function and releasing the inhibited state of NK cells in the cancer microenvironment.
Keyphrases
- nk cells
- cell therapy
- papillary thyroid
- clinical trial
- stem cells
- current status
- squamous cell
- immune response
- induced apoptosis
- squamous cell carcinoma
- mesenchymal stem cells
- randomized controlled trial
- cell cycle arrest
- dendritic cells
- quality improvement
- regulatory t cells
- childhood cancer
- signaling pathway
- oxidative stress
- cell death
- clinical practice
- open label
- replacement therapy