Can Treg elimination enhance NK cell therapy for AML?

In this issue of Blood, Bachanova et al describe how modulation of the inhibitory tumor environment may enhance natural killer (NK) cell clinical activity and produce encouraging results in the treatment of refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML). NK cells are highly proliferative, early responders of the innate immune response that in preclinical models can exert potent activity against a wide range of malignancies, including AML, and across HLA barriers. Considerable efforts have been made to exploit this activity in clinical trials but with only modest success.