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. 2017 Mar 23;24:22. doi: 10.1186/s12929-017-0325-0

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© The Author(s). 2017

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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Fig. 1 — Activation of NKT cells by α-galactosylceramide and its analogs. CD1d molecule on the antigen presenting cells (APCs) presents α-galactosylceramide and various analogs, such as phenyl α-GalCer (C34) and OCH, to the Vα14 T cell receptor (TCR) of iNKT cells, and triggers the activation of iNKT cells to secrete cytokines, e.g. interferon-γ (IFN-γ) and interleukin-4 (IL-4). Modification of the α-GalCer at its acyl chain or phytosphingosine chain can manipulate the iNKT cells to produce different amount of IL-4 or IFN-γ to polarize immune response toward Th1 or Th2