Future prospects for NK cell therapy

Jeffrey S. Miller, MD, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, comments on the future of natural killer (NK) cell therapy research. In the past 20 years, the field of NK cell-based immunotherapy has rapidly grown and currently, researchers are mainly focusing on optimizing the source of therapeutic NK cells for adoptive transfer and enhancing NK cell cytotoxicity and persistence in vivo. Multiple sources of therapeutic NK cells include stem cell-derived NK cells, adaptive NK cells, NK cell lines, umbilical cord blood NK, haploidentical NK cells, cytokine-induced memory-like NK cells and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) NK cells. This interview took place during the 36th Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.