Antigen-specific NK cell memory in rhesus macaques.

R Keith Reeves, Haiying Li, Stephanie Jost, Eryn Blass, Hualin Li, Jamie L Schafer, Valerie Varner, Cordelia Manickam, Leila Eslamizar, Marcus Altfeld, Ulrich H von Andrian, Dan H Barouch

Nature immunology 2015 Sep

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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 SHIV(SF162P3)-infected and SIV(mac251)-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.

Citation

R Keith Reeves, Haiying Li, Stephanie Jost, Eryn Blass, Hualin Li, Jamie L Schafer, Valerie Varner, Cordelia Manickam, Leila Eslamizar, Marcus Altfeld, Ulrich H von Andrian, Dan H Barouch. Antigen-specific NK cell memory in rhesus macaques. Nature immunology. 2015 Sep;16(9):927-32