Identifying and harnessing NK cell subsets in the human lung for treatment of lung cancer.

Lung cancer has become a leading cause of death worldwide, with 1.8 mio deaths annually. Treatment usually includes surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. Recently, immunotherapy has been started to be used to complement these conventional treatment strategies.

While NK cells from peripheral blood are well-known for their capacity to lyse tumor cells, their usage in cell-based immunotherapy remains challenging due to e.g. inefficient trafficking to the tumor, limited infiltration into the tumor, and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.

Rather little is yet known about NK cells in tissues such as the lung, their tumor-killing capacity, and how they can be employed in immunotherapy for lung cancer patients. We hypothesize that lung tissue NK cells are particularly equipped to target and infiltrate solid tumors.

Our goals here are to map the NK cell landscape in different areas of healthy human lung (aim 1) and in lung tumors (aim 2) and, based on the results, to expand and harness lung NK cell subsets most suitable for infiltrating and killing lung tumors as a future treatment strategy (aim 3).

For this, we will make use of cutting-edge technologies such as 29-colour flow cytometry, RNA-sequencing, and live cell-imaging.

Our goal is to translate the generated knowledge into new treatment concepts for patients with solid tumors and to ultimately increase survival in lung cancer patients.