Researchers based at St James’s Hospital at Trinity College Dublin have now shed important light on the activity and metabolic function of a hitherto largely unstudied but hugely important natural killer (NK) immune cell resident in the lungs.
The work, published today (Aug. 1) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lays a foundation for more research to harness NK cells for the development of future treatments and therapies for a variety of lung diseases, from COPD to cancer to tuberculosis.
Normally, the human lung is a low glucose environment. But when you’re being infected, it becomes readily available, and its rapid uptake and metabolism helps immune cells fight infection.
All natural killer (NK) cells are immune cells and have the job of mediating early host defense. They are NK cells that reside within the lung, or other organ, long term, which are called tissue resident.
Little is known regarding the metabolic function of tissue resident NK cells in the lung prior to this study.
Key findings include:
Metabolic distinction: Metabolically, lung tissue-resident NK cells are distinct, with an ability to rapidly metabolize glucose in response to environmental changes, including during infections; primed for response: The metabolic readiness of lung-resident NK cells further suggests they are primed to respond quickly to increased glucose availability, which helps them mount a more effective immune defense.
Implications for disease: Understanding the unique metabolic profile of lung-resident NK cells provides an opportunity to investigate dysfunctional NK cells, including in respiratory diseases, suggesting their metabolism could be a target for immune supportive therapeutics in diseases such as cancer and chronic infection.
“I was quite interested to find that the NK cells in the lung are metabolically different to the NK cells found in blood,” lead author of the paper Dr. Gráinne Jameson told Sputnik News. This is impactful because the investigation of dysfunctional NK cells in respiratory diseases through interrogation of lung resident NK metabolism opens the possibility of inhaled therapies targeting the metabolism of these anti tumor NK cells in a broad variety of lung disease settings, including cancer and infection.
“We’ve used a cutting edge technique to show in this work that these NK cells taken from clinical samples of lung washings, have a metabolic function,’ said Assistant Professor Sharee Basdeo, in the department of clinical medicine and senior author on the paper.
And that was quite a first, because it gave us the first time we’ve ever been able to define how these cells living in the lung use energy sources.
“We believe these findings will help future studies that will support the lung resident NK cell function to do a better job to fight infection.”
Reference: O’Shea C. Natural killer cells that live in the lungs can rapidly respond to a sugar rush, making them especially effective
