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Negative Regulation of NK Cell Activities by Inhibitory Receptor CD94/NKG2A Leads to Altered NK Cell-Induced Modulation of Dendritic Cell Functions in Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection

2004; American Association of Immunologists; Volume: 173; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4049/jimmunol.173.10.6072

1550-6606

Masahisa Jinushi, Tetsuo Takehara, Tomohide Tatsumi, Tatsuya Kanto, Takuya Miyagi, Takahiro Suzuki, Yoshiyuki Kanazawa, Naoki Hiramatsu, Norio Hayashi,

Cytomegalovirus and herpesvirus research

NK cells are potent activators of dendritic cells (DCs), but it remains obscure how third-party cells affect the ability of NK cells to modulate DC functions. We show here that NK cells derived from healthy donors (N-NK), when cocultured with human liver epithelial cells, induced maturation as well as activation of DCs, such as increased migratory capacity as well as T cell stimulatory activity. In contrast, NK cells from chronic hepatitis C virus-infected donors (HCV-NK) were not capable of activating DCs under the same conditions. In comparison to N-NK, HCV-NK showed higher expression of CD94/NKG2A and produced IL-10 and TGFbeta when cultured with hepatic cells, most of which express HLA-E, a ligand for CD94/NKG2A. Blockade of NKG2A restored the ability of HCV-NK to activate DCs, which appeared to result from the reduced NK cell production of IL-10 and TGFbeta. The blockade also endowed HCV-NK with an ability to drive DCs to generate Th1-polarized CD4+ T cells. These findings show that NK cell modulation of DCs is regulated by third-party cells through NK receptor and its ligand interaction. Aberrant expression of NK receptors may have an impact on the magnitude and direction of DC activation of T cells under pathological conditions, such as chronic viral infection.