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Association of KIR2DS4 and its variant KIR1D with leukemia

Leukemia volume 22, pages 2129–2130 (2008)Cite this article

Natural killer (NK) cells are postulated to take part in innate immunosurveillance against leukemia, contributing to both the disease control and clearance.1 A systematic review regarding the role of NK cell receptors and their ligands in leukemia has recently been published by Verheyden and Demanet.1

The activity of NK cells depends on the balance of activating and inhibitory signals that are transmitted through respective receptors, including killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs). HLA class I molecules are ligands for inhibitory KIRs, whereas ligands for their activating counterparts have not been well defined. As well, the physiological role of activating KIRs remains obscure and appears particularly intriguing in view of high degree of diversity with regard to the activating KIR gene content in humans. In general, two major groups of haplotypes may be distinguished: haplotypes A with KIR2DS4 as the only activating KIR and haplotypes B characterized by the presence of at least one activating KIR other than KIR2DS4. Furthermore, various alleles of KIR2DS4 have been described including intact KIR2DS4*001 encoding cell membrane-anchored receptor resembling other activating KIRs and KIR2DS4*003, *005 and *006 (KIR1D) partial deletion variants, encoding protein devoid of transmembrane region and possessing only one immunoglobulin-like domain.2 The proteins encoded by KIR1D variants are functionally inactive and therefore, a number of individuals homozygous for hapolotype A and KIR1D do not have any activating KIR.

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by the Grant no. 2 PO5B 155 28 from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation, Silesian Medical University, Katowice, Poland

    S Giebel, J Wojnar, M Krawczyk-Kulis, J Holowiecki & S Kyrcz-Krzemien

  2. Department of Clinical Immunology, Laboratory of Immunogenetics, Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, Polish Academy of Sciences, Wroclaw, Poland

    I Nowak & P Kusnierczyk

  3. Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, Institute of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Jan Dlugosz Pedagogical University, Czestochowa, Poland

    P Kusnierczyk

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  1. S Giebel
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Correspondence to S Giebel.

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Giebel, S., Nowak, I., Wojnar, J. et al. Association of KIR2DS4 and its variant KIR1D with leukemia. Leukemia 22, 2129–2130 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/leu.2008.108

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