Tumor cells of non-hematopoietic and hematopoietic origins express activation-induced C-type lectin, the ligand for killer cell lectin-like receptor F1.

Killer cell lectin-like receptor F1 (KLRF1) is an activating C-type lectin-like receptor expressed on human NK cells and subsets of T cells. In this study, we show that activation-induced C-type lectin (AICL) is a unique KLRF1 ligand expressed on tumor cell lines of hematopoietic and non-hematopoietic origins. We screened a panel of human tumor cell lines using the KLRF1 reporter cells and found that several tumor lines expressed KLRF1 ligands. We characterized a putative KLRF1 ligand expressed on the U937 cell line. The molecular mass for the deglycosylated ligand was 28 kDa under non-reducing condition and 17 kDa under reducing condition, suggesting that the KLRF1 ligand is a homodimer. By expression cloning from a U937 cDNA library, we identified AICL as a KLRF1 ligand. We generated mAbs against AICL to identify the KLRF1 ligands on non-hematopoietic tumor lines. The anti-AICL mAbs stained the tumor lines that express the KLRF1 ligands and importantly the interaction of KLRF1 with the KLRF1 ligand on non-hematopoietic tumors was completely blocked by the two anti-AICL mAbs. Moreover, NK cell degranulation triggered by AICL-expressing targets was partially inhibited by the anti-AICL mAb. Finally, we demonstrate that AICL is expressed in human primary liver cancers. These results suggest that AICL is expressed on tumor cells of non-hematopoietic origins and raise the possibility that AICL may contribute to NK cell surveillance of tumor cells.