Recently, the Oncology Department research team and the Infectious Diseases Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of XJTU published its latest research results, which revealed that NK cells exposed to exogenous major histocompatibility class I (MHCI) provide a significant immunologic barrier to the growth and progression of malignancy, and demonstrated that activating such receptors as NKG2D and NKp46, and inhibitory receptors such as Ly49C/I of NK cells exhibit dynamic plasticity in an MHCI environment, thus suggesting that altering the activation state of NK cells may contribute to lung cancer control. Their work may play an important role in the future use of NK cells for immunotherapy and MHCI for predicting the efficacy of immunotherapy in cancer patients.

The research result was published in PNAS (IF=9.66), an international authoritative journal under the title Modulation of NKG2D, NKp46, and Ly49C/I facilitates natural killer cell-mediated control of lung cancer. XJTU doctoral candidates Shi Lei and Li Kang are the first authors, and they are, respectively, from the Infectious Diseases Department and Oncology Department of the First Affiliated Hospital. XJTU is the institutional affiliation of the first author, and the University of Virginia and the Washington University in St. Louis are partners in this study.