Marijne Vermeer

Huge thanks to Sònia Tugues and the amazing @csparano.bsky.social, @ncoianiz.bsky.social, Maud Mayoux, Gioana Litscher, André Fonseca, Stanislav Dergun, Caroline Mussak, Lukas Rindlisbacher, @phaene.bsky.social, Laura Ducimetière, Tobias Wertheimer, Lothar Dieterich, @becherlab.bsky.social

✨ We believe that understanding how NK cells operate in different environments brings us one step closer to harnessing their full potential against metastatic cancer.

In metastatic nodules, TGF-β signaling limits NK cells by inducing a dysfunctional, tissue-resident-like state.
Blocking TGF-β partially restores their effector function, pointing to a way to enhance anti-tumor immunity. 💥

After this initial clearance phase, most CD11b⁺ NK cells remain intravascular and fail to track tumor cells that extravasate into the lung tissue.
Meanwhile, CD27⁺ NK cells infiltrate metastatic nodules more efficiently, but with a new environment come new challenges.

We found that the lung vasculature hosts differentiated CD11b⁺ NK cells, that act as first responders and rapidly eliminate metastasizing tumor cells. ⚔️

The lung is a common site of metastasis, but how immune cells protect it remains unclear.
❓We set out to uncover how NK cells patrol this environment, and why they sometimes lose their anti-tumor control.

Tissue localization of natural killer cells dictates surveillance of lung metastasis - Nature Communications Many cancers metastasize to the lungs, yet immune cells rarely succeed in eliminating them. Here we show that although NK cells that patrol the lung vasculature are highly differentiated and cytotoxic...

Excited to share our new study out in Nature Communications! 🎉 We show that NK cell localization in the lung determines their ability to eliminate tumor cells.

🫁 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Insights: Jacob Myers, Shanelle Reilly, and Laurent Brossay discuss new work by Sonia Tugues and colleagues (https://buff.ly/40sZtwc) which shows that tissue-resident NK cells produce TGF-β1 themselves to establish and maintain residency in glandular tissues. https://buff.ly/4gQjFOk