Neuro-immune interactions in metastasis

Neuro imune interactions

In recent work published in Nature (Correia et al 2021), we discovered that the pool of natural killer (NK) cells within distant tissues can itself determine metastatic progression, and that normalizing NK cell abundance might be a way to effectively control dormant disseminated tumor cell (DTCs). But, what mechanisms control NK cell dynamics in tissues?

With a seed fund from the Beug Foundation, we are beginning to address how neuronal hardwiring impacts NK cell immunity in distant tissues, and how neuron-NK cell interactions can be explored therapeutically to prevent metastasis.

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