Natural Killer Cell-Derived Vesicular miRNAs: A New Anticancer Approach?

Natural killer (NK) cells are cytotoxic lymphocytes targeting virus-infected cells and cancer cells. Specific pro- and antikilling signals modulate the overall ability of NK cells to kill cancer cells, however, several immune-escape mechanisms can be enacted by cancer cells to avoid NK-mediated killing. Recently, increasing evidence has shown that extracellular vesicles (EV) released by NK cells carry proteins and miRNAs able to exert an antitumoral effect, even within a highly immune-suppressive tumor microenvironment. These recent findings suggest a possible use of NK-derived EVs as anticancer agents and propel the development of new strategies to enrich EVs with the most effective anticancer cargo as a promising new anticancer approach. ©2019 American Association for Cancer Research.