近年來人類免疫係統研究已經出現了前所未有的突破。在二十一世紀，通過增強體液和T細胞免疫的細胞療法的開發已經成為癌症治療的重要組成部分。雖然很久以來人們都認為，自然殺傷(NK)細胞在誘導針對腫瘤抗原無關的宿主免疫應答的能力優於T細胞，但自然殺傷(NK)細胞在臨床上治療潛力基本還未開發。越來越多的研究表明，激活和抑製NK細胞，能夠增加NK細胞對腫瘤的細胞毒性，增強NK細胞的抗腫瘤免疫能夠促進許多藥物和基因治療方法的發展。發表於《自然評論:藥物發現》(Nature reviews. Drug discovery)2015年6月的一篇文章，對NK細胞在體外對腫瘤的作用進行綜述能力的進步，並提供調查了相關的新的治療方法和策略，利用NK細胞為基礎的腫瘤免疫療法在臨床中具有很大潛力。

原文摘要：

Therapeutic approaches to enhance natural killer cell cytotoxicity against cancer: the force awakens.

Scientific insights into the human immune system have recently led to unprecedented breakthroughs in immunotherapy. In the twenty-first century, drugs and cell-based therapies developed to bolster humoral and T cell immunity represent an established and growing component of cancer therapeutics. Although natural killer (NK) cells have long been known to have advantages over T cells in terms of their capacity to induce antigen-independent host immune responses against malignancies, their therapeutic potential in the clinic has been largely unexplored. A growing number of scientific discoveries into pathways that both activate and suppress NK cell function, as well as methods to sensitize tumours to NK cell cytotoxicity, have led to the development of numerous pharmacological and genetic methods to enhance NK cell antitumour immunity. These findings, as well as advances in our ability to expand NK cells ex vivo and manipulate their capacity to home to the tumour, have now provided investigators with a variety of new methods and strategies to harness the full potential of NK cell-based cancer immunotherapy in the clinic.