Natural Killer Cells from Malignant Pleural Effusion Are Endowed with a Decidual-Like Proangiogenic Polarization

Figure 1

NK cell subset distribution in pleural effusion samples and controls. Flow cytometric analysis showed the percentage of NK cells in all samples from healthy controls (hPB), peripheral blood (iPB) and pleural effusion (iPE) from patients with inflammatory disease, peripheral blood (ptPB) and pleural effusion (ptPE) from patients with primary tumor, and peripheral blood (tmPB) and pleural effusion (tmPE) from patients with tumor metastasis. (a). CD56^brightCD16⁻ cell subset predominated in all the PE samples with a percentage ranging from 35% in iPE, to 40% in ptPE, and to 60% in tmPE. On the contrary, in PB of pleural effusion patients and healthy controls, the percentages of CD56^brightCD16⁻ NK cells were approximately 5% (b). Representative dot plots of healthy donors and patients with inflammatory, primary, and metastatic tumor PE are shown, respectively (c). Data are shown as mean ± SEM of 46 samples; , , , and ( values are shown).

(a)

(b)

(c)