Liver-resident NK cells and their potential functions

摘要

Natural killer(NK)cells represent a heterogeneous population of innate lymphocytes with phenotypically and functionally distinct subsets.In particular,recent studies have identified a unique subset of NK cells residing within the liver that are maintained as tissue-resident cells,confer antigen-specific memory responses and exhibit different phenotypical and developmental characteristics compared with conventional NK(cNK)cells.These findings have encouraged researchers to uncover tissue-resident NK cells at other sites,and detailed analyses have revealed that these tissue-resident NK cells share many similarities with liver-resident NK cells and tissue-resident memory T cells.Here,we present a brief historical perspective on the discovery of liver-resident NK cells and discuss their relationship to cNK cells and other emerging NK cell subsets and their potential functions.