Basya Rybalov

TL;DR: Natural killer cells constitute 50–90% of lymphocytes in human uterine decidua in early pregnancy and are compared with the CD56bright and CD56dim peripheral NK cell subsets by microarray analysis, with verification of results by flow cytometry and RT-PCR.

TL;DR: During pregnancy the uterine decidua is populated by large numbers of natural killer cells with a phenotype CD56superbrightCD16−CD9+KIR+ distinct from both subsets of peripheral blood NK cells, and these progenitors produced NK cells when cultured in conditioned medium from decidual stromal cells supplemented with IL-15 and stem cell factor.

TL;DR: dNK formed conjugates and activating immune synapses with 721.221 and K562 cells in which CD2, LFA-1 and actin were polarized toward the contact site, but failed to polarize their microtubule organizing centers and perforin-containing granules to the synapse, accounting for their lack of cytotoxicity.

TL;DR: The demonstration of CD1d expression on fetal trophoblasts together with the differential pattern of cytokine expression by decidual iNKT cells suggests that maternal iN KT cell interactions withCD1d expressed on invading fetal cells may play an immunoregulatory role at the maternal–fetal interface.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that EVT are specialized cells whose properties are not imitated by HLA‐G–expressing surrogate cell lines, and are crucial for understanding maternal–fetal tolerance and development of pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia and miscarriages.