THE COLLABORATIVE ROLE OF NATURAL KILLER CELLS AND MACROPHAGES IN TUMOUR CELLS SURVIVAL/DEATH

Abstract

Macrophages are reported to downmodulate natural killer cells (NKs) activities and cytotoxicity towards tumour cells in solid cancers. However, the roles of NKs and macrophages are underappreciated in haematological tumour. Here, we investigated the roles of NKs and macrophages in both acute and chronic myeloid leukaemia (AML and CML). We observed that macrophages protect CML against NK cytotoxicity under chronic infection-inflammation condition induced by mycoplasma. This motivated us to investigate the mechanism of macrophages protection of CML against NK cytotoxicity, using co-culture models. We found that macrophages protective effect was not observed for AML regardless of infection-inflammation condition. This further prompted us to explore the functions of NKs and macrophages derived from AML bone marrow, using Human Transcriptome Array (HTA). HTA analyses suggested that AML-macrophages potentially downregulate AML-NK function. Further studies on manipulation of NK-macrophage crosstalk could provide insights on novel pathways of macrophages-mediated modulation of NKs in myeloid leukaemia.