Editorial: Women in NK and innate lymphoid cell biology

Alessandra Zingoni, Zingoni A, Bellón T, Teresa Bellón
Frontiers in immunology · 2023 · vol. 14 , pp. 1157166 · doi:10.3389/fimmu.2023.1157166 · PMID:36875138 · PMC9975708
Other OA: gold CC-BY-4.0
📄 Open PDF Full text JSON View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by qwen3.7-flash+body, 2026-08-13 ⓘ

This editorial reviews five articles on NK cell development and function, including a discussion of uterine NK cells in endometriosis and their potential as immunotherapeutic targets for reproductive disorders.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by qwen3.7-flash, 2026-08-13 · read from full text ⓘ

This editorial reviews multiple studies on natural killer cell biology, covering clonal tracking in macaques, the role of IRF-2 in human differentiation, and the impact of inflammation and aging on NK function. It highlights research into uterine NK cells in pregnancy and reproductive diseases, as well as NK phenotypes in SARS-CoV-2 infection and head and neck cancer. Specifically, it discusses a study by Chen et al. that identified a unique SFRP4+ IGFBP5hi NKT cell population within adenomyosis lesions, which converts tissue stem cells into neurogenic cells to drive chronic pain. Relevance to endometriosis: The paper explicitly discusses adenomyosis, an estrogen-dependent gynecological disease closely related to endometriosis, focusing on the cellular mechanisms underlying its associated chronic pain.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Full text 5,781 characters · extracted from pmc-nxml · 4 sections · click to expand

Nk

Mestre-Duran et al. showed that the functional capabilities and phenotype of NK cells activated in vitro through TLR4/9 agonists were not completely abolished by the inhibition of the JAK-STAT pathway by ruxolitinib. This drug has been recently approved for treating acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease. These findings could have clinical implications for the protective role of NK cells in the graft versus leukemia effect after bone marrow allogenic transplantation.

Nkt

In the manuscript by Chen et al. , a novel cluster of cyotoxic lymphocytes sharing T and NK cell features and expressiong high levels of secreted frizzled related protein 4 (SFRP4) and insulin-like growth factor binding protein 5 (IGFBP5) (i.e: SFRP4 + IGFBP5 hi NKT cells) was discovered by single cell RNAseq analysis in the foci of patients with adenomyosis, an estrogen-dependent gynecological disease, in which chronic pain is a clinically unresolved issue. Of interest, it was observed that these SFRP4 + IGFBP5 hi NKT cells were capable of converting part of the stem cells found in affected tissues into neurogenic cells and were therefore, likely responsible of inducing pain.

Uterine

NK cells have emerged as crucial innate immune cells involved in the physiology and pathology of both non-pregnant and pregnant uteri. Xie et al. have elaborated an interesting overview about past and recent advances in human uterine NK (uNK) cell research highlighting the role of uNK cells in both normal physiological conditions and in pregnancy. The mechanism of action of uNK cells in various reproductive diseases including recurrent miscarriage, preeclampsia, and endometriosis is discussed from multiple perspectives. In addition, the potential clinical usage of uNK cells as a novel immunotherapeutic strategy for reproductive disorders is largely described.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: pmc-nxml ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

MeSH descriptors

Immunity, Innate Lymphocytes Biology Female Humans

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-10-25T09:32:14.900964+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:38:58.421550+00:00
License: CC-BY-4.0 · commercial use OK · attribution required
Per Europe PMC