Chemokine Receptor Expression on Normal Blood CD56⁺ NK-Cells Elucidates Cell Partners That Comigrate during the Innate and Adaptive Immune Responses and Identifies a Transitional NK-Cell Population

Figure 3

Illustrative dot plots showing the expression of the CXCR1, CXCR2, CXCR3, and CCR5 chemokine receptors (CKR) in normal peripheral blood (PB) (a), where only (red dots) and (blue dots) are observed, and in the PB of a patient with a chronic lymphoproliferative disorder of NK-cells (CLPD-NK) (b), exhibiting a transitional phenotype (green dots); other lymphocytes are shown in gray. In order to obtain the dot plots showed in this figure, the PB cells were stained with APC-conjugated anti-CD3, PC5-conjugated anti-CD56, PE-conjugated anti-CKR (CXCR1, CXCR2, CXCR3, or CCR5), and FITC-conjugated anti-CD16 monoclonal antibodies. As shown in (a), in the normal PB most NK-cells are CXCR1⁺ and CXCR2⁺, whereas only a very small fraction of cells stains positively for CXCR3 and/or CCR5; in contrast, most NK-cells are CXCR3⁺ whereas CCR5 is expressed in only a fraction and CXCR1 and CXCR2 are virtually negative. As it can be seen in (b), the expanded NK-cells from this patient, which have relatively high levels of CD56 expression, are CD16⁺ and they express the CXCR1, CXCR2, CXCR3, and CCR5 molecules in a considerable fraction of cells.

(a)

(b)