The role of natural killer T cells in liver transplantation

Wenchao Zhao; Mingqian Li; Shifei Song; Yao Zhi; Chen Huan; Guoyue Lv

doi:10.3389/fcell.2023.1274361

The role of natural killer T cells in liver transplantation

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2024 Jan 5:11:1274361. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2023.1274361. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Wenchao Zhao^#¹, Mingqian Li^#¹, Shifei Song¹, Yao Zhi¹, Chen Huan², Guoyue Lv¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, General Surgery Center, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China.
² Center of Infectious Diseases and Pathogen Biology, Institute of Virology and AIDS Research, Key Laboratory of Organ Regeneration and Transplantation of The Ministry of Education, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Natural killer T cells (NKTs) are innate-like lymphocytes that are abundant in the liver and participate in liver immunity. NKT cells express both NK cell and T cell markers, modulate innate and adaptive immune responses. Type I and Type II NKT cells are classified according to the TCR usage, while they recognize lipid antigen in a non-classical major histocompatibility (MHC) molecule CD1d-restricted manner. Once activated, NKT cells can quickly produce cytokines and chemokines to negatively or positively regulate the immune responses, depending on the different NKT subsets. In liver transplantation (LTx), the immune reactions in a series of processes determine the recipients' long-term survival, including ischemia-reperfusion injury, alloresponse, and post-transplant infection. This review provides insight into the research on NKT cells subpopulations in LTx immunity during different processes, and discusses the shortcomings of the current research on NKT cells. Additionally, the CD56-expressing T cells are recognized as a NK-like T cell population, they were also discussed during these processes.

Keywords: NK-like T cells; NKT cell subpopulation; NKT cells; immunotherapy; transplantation immunity.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The authors declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Financial support was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81901627 and U20A20360), Science and Technology Department of Jilin Province (YDZJ202201ZYTS678).