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Review
. 2021 Feb:68:48-53.
doi: 10.1016/j.coi.2020.08.009. Epub 2020 Oct 14.

Natural killers or ILC1s? That is the question

Cyril Seillet  1 , Laurent Brossay  2 , Eric Vivier  3
Affiliations
Review

Natural killers or ILC1s? That is the question

Cyril Seillet et al. Curr Opin Immunol. 2021 Feb.

Abstract

Group 1 innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) comprise the natural killer (NK) cells and ILC1s. Both cells co-exist in peripheral tissues and despite effort to characterize the molecular identity and developmental pathways of ILC1s, their relationship with NK cells remains elusive. ILC1s and NK cells share many common features and analysis of ILC1s in tissues revealed a great heterogeneity and distinct transcriptional requirement of each ILC1 subsets complexifying the organization of this group. Here, we discuss whether ILC1 and NK cells can be considered as distinct lineages based on their origin, location, phenotype or transcriptional regulation. Discrimination of NK cells and ILC1s represent an important challenge to unravel the individual functions of these cells during infection and tumor immunosurveillance.

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Conflict of interest statement

DECLARATION OF INTERESTS

E.V. is a cofounder and employee of Innate Pharma.

Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:. Tissue-specific markers and transcriptional requirements of the group 1 ILC in mouse.
Characteristic markers and transcription factors of ILC1 and NK cells in the liver, thymus, salivary gland and intestine are shown. Common features of ILC1 and NK cells are depicted in green, while ILC1 and NK cell-specific receptors and transcription factors are shown in purple and red respectively (IEL, intraepithelial lymphocytes).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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