Megan A. Cooper

TL;DR: Human natural killer cells comprise approximately 15% of all circulating lymphocytes and have the capacity to produce abundant cytokines following activation of monocytes, but has low natural cytotoxicity and is CD16(dim) or CD16(-).

TL;DR: It is proposed that human CD56bright NK cells have a unique functional role in the innate immune response as the primary source of NK cell–derived immunoregulatory cytokines, regulated in part by differential monokine production.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that CD56(bright) NK cells are present in human lymph nodes and that endogenous T cell-derived IL-2, acting through the NK high-affinityIL-2 receptor, costimulates CD56 (bright)NK cells to secrete IFN-gamma.

TL;DR: It is shown that cytokine-activated NK cells transferred into naïve hosts can be specifically detected 7–22 days later when they are phenotypically similar to naïve cells and are not constitutively producing IFN-γ, indicating an ability of innate immune cells to retain an intrinsic memory of prior activation.

TL;DR: The results show that distinct cytokine and chemokine patterns are induced in NK cells in response to different costimulatory signals from these three monokines, which suggests that NK cell cytokine production may be governed in part by the monokine milieu induced during the early proinflammatory response to infection and by the subset of NK cells present at the site of inflammation.