1. ¹Department of Paediatric Haematology/Oncology, University Children's Hospital, Tübingen, Germany
2. ²Institute of Transfusion Medicine, Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany

Correspondence: Dr T Feuchtinger, Department of Paediatric Haematology/Oncology, University Children's Hospital, Eberhard Karls University, Hoppe Seyler Strasse 1, Tübingen D 72076, Germany. E-mail: tobias.feuchtinger@med.uni-tuebingen.de

³The first two authors contributed equally to this work.

Received 6 June 2008; Revised 10 October 2008; Accepted 10 October 2008; Published online 19 January 2009.

Abstract

Relapse after allo-SCT in patients with acute leukaemia remains a major problem. A beneficial impact of alloreactive natural killer (NK) cells has been reported for myeloid malignancies, but has been questionable for B-lineage ALL. We analysed lysis of primary paediatric precursor-B-ALL blasts by 285 NK cell clones to investigate whether HLA class I expression on the blasts and phenotypic killer cell Ig-like receptor (KIR) expression on NK cells affect the lytic activity against ALL blasts. Precursor-B-ALL blasts with low HLA-I expression were lysed by a majority (79%) of NK cell clones, whereas those with high HLA-I expression showed low susceptibility to NK clones independent of their KIR expression patterns. NK cell activity against susceptible blasts was regulated by differential surface expression of the three major KIRs (CD158a, CD158b, CD158e). NK clones with none of these three KIRs or a single KIR that recognized no ligand, were not inhibited by the targets and exerted higher lysis (P=<0.0005) in comparison to NK clones expressing KIRs with a ligand on the ALL blasts. In conclusion, the quantity of HLA-I expression on precursor-B-ALL blast regulates overall NK cell susceptibility; in case of reduced HLA expression, differential surface expression of KIRs affects NK cell alloreactivity against those blasts.