Figure 3.

NK cells from pediatric cancer patients show decreased lysis but not decreased degranulation when exposed to K562 target cells

(A) Mass cytometry analysis of a subset of the patients and controls shown in Figure 2, now investigating NK receptors. Pediatric healthy donors (PH, n = 6); pediatric cancer patients (PC, n = 6).

(B) Intracellular fluorescent flow cytometry showing percentage of total NK cells positive for perforin or granzyme B.

(C) Results of K562 cytotoxicity assays for five patients and five age matched control donors performed at the indicated NK cell to K562 cell effector:target ratios.

(D) Flow cytometry analysis of NK cells from seven pediatric healthy donors (PH) and seven pediatric cancer patients (PC) co-incubated with K562 cells. Results include the cancer patients analyzed in C. Degranulation was measured by including a CD107a-specific antibody during the coincubation and cytokine production by intracellular cytokine staining. Error bars show mean ± 1 standard deviation.

(E) K562 cytotoxicity assay performed using NK cells from patient C08 and their age matched control HV11 using NK cells expanded in vitro with IL-2 for 14 days. E:T indicates the effector: target ratio used. For A, B, and D the results of unpaired t-tests, correcting for multiple comparisons with 5% FDR when necessary, are shown on the figure. ∗p < 0.05, ∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗∗p < 0.001.