Abstract
Natural killer (NK) cells have traditionally been considered nonspecific components of innate immunity, but recent studies have shown features of antigen-specific memory in mouse NK cells. However, it has remained unclear whether this phenomenon also exists in primates. We found that splenic and hepatic NK cells from SHIVSF162P3-infected and SIVmac251-infected macaques specifically lysed Gag- and Env-pulsed dendritic cells in an NKG2-dependent fashion, in contrast to NK cells from uninfected macaques. Moreover, splenic and hepatic NK cells from Ad26-vaccinated macaques efficiently lysed antigen-matched but not antigen-mismatched targets 5 years after vaccination. These data demonstrate that robust, durable, antigen-specific NK cell memory can be induced in primates after both infection and vaccination, and this finding could be important for the development of vaccines against HIV-1 and other pathogens.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants AI078526, AI096040 and AI095985 to D.H.B.; AI069259, AI111595 and AI112521 to U.H.v.A.; AI067031 to M.A.; and AI118468 to R.K.R.), the American Foundation for AIDS Research (grant 108547-53-RGRL to R.K.R.), the Harvard Center for AIDS Research (grant AI060354 to R.K.R.) and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard (S.J., M.A., D.H.B. and U.H.v.A.).
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R.K.R., M.A., U.H.v.A. and D.H.B. designed the studies. Haiying Li, S.J., E.B., Hualin Li, J.L.S., V.V., C.M. and L.E. conducted the assays. R.K.R. and D.H.B. wrote the paper with the assistance of all other authors.
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Reeves, R., Li, H., Jost, S. et al. Antigen-specific NK cell memory in rhesus macaques. Nat Immunol 16, 927–932 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ni.3227
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ni.3227
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