Decoding the biological properties and transcriptomic landscapes of human natural killer cells derived from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood

Longitudinal studies have highlighted allogeneic natural killer (NK) cell-based cytotherapy for cancer im-munosurveillance and immunotherapy, yet the deficiency of systematic and detailed comparison of NK cells from candidate sources including umbilical cord blood (UC) and bone marrow (BM) largely hinders the large-scale ap-plication. Herein, we isolated resident NK cells (rUC-NK, rBM-NK) from mononuclear cells (MNC), and analyzed the corresponding expanded NK cell counterparts (eUC-NK, eBM-NK). Then, the eUC-NK and eBM-NK were turned to multifaceted bioinformatics from the aspects of gene expression profiling and genetic variations. The percentages of total or activated NK cells in rBM-NK group were approximate 2-fold higher over those in the rUC-NK group, respectively. Instead, the proportion of total NK cells in eUC-NK was higher than that in the eBM-NK group, and in particular, the CD25+ memory-like NK cell subset. Furthermore, eUC-NK and eBM-NK manifested multidimensional similarities and diversities in gene expression pattern and genetic spectrum, whereas both eUC-NK and eBM-NK exhibited effective tumor killing capacity. Collectively, we dissected the cellular and transcriptomic signatures of NK cells generated from UC-MNC and BM-MNC, which supplied new literature for further exploring the characteristics of the indicated NK cells and would benefit the clinical application for cancer immunotherapy in future.

Automated summary

This study compared NK cells from different sources and found differences in cell numbers and gene expression. Furthermore, both UC and BM-derived NK cells exhibited effective tumor killing capacity, providing new insights for future cancer immunotherapy.