Table 1.

Pro-tumor conversions of natural killers (NKs).

Type of Conversion	Mouse Models/Human Patients	Phenotype	Functions	Limitations
Conventional NK to decidual NK-like phenotype [99,100]	Human patients of non-small cell lung carcinoma and colorectal cancer	↑↑↑ 1 CD49a and/or CD9	↑↑↑ Secretion of pro-angiogenic factors and enzymes associated with tissue remodeling	The actual contribution to tumor progression in vivo is hard to determine
NK to ILC1-like phenotype [101,102]	Mouse models of fibrosarcoma, melanoma, and prostate cancer	↓↓↓ 1 Eomes and CD62L ↑↑↑ CD49a, CD69, DNAM-1 and TRAIL ↑↑↑ LAG-3, CD96, and CTLA-4	↑↑↑ Secretion of PDGF-AB and GM-CSF ↓↓↓ Secretion of RANTES	Human relevancy is unclear

¹ ↑↑↑—upregulated; ↓↓↓—downregulated.