Anomalous killer cells: Thymus cell dependency, precursor frequency, and response to immunosuppressive therapy

Natural Killer Cell Activity of Human Fetal Liver Cells after Allogeneic Stimulation

“…The mediator cells of these two activities form different cell populations with different target cell selectivity and recognition, as shown by cold-target inhibition and by single-cell assays [8,20]. Studies on the origin of NK-like activity generated in mixed leukocyte culture (MLC) have given contradictory results, some of which support a T cellderived [12,13,18] and others an NK cell-derived origin [10,22). Recently, Nieminen & Saksela [14] reported a new monoclonal antibody, NK-9, which in addition to NK cells also recognizes noncytotoxic precursors for NK-like effector cells and cytotoxic T lymphocytes, thus suggesting a common precursor cell for both these activities.…”