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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Expansion, Purification, and Functional Assessment of Human Peripheral Blood NK Cells
Published on: February 3, 2011
Requirement of CD4+ lymphocytes in IL-2-stimulated NK cell proliferation
P E Kovanen1, S Knuutila, T Timonen
1Department of Pathology, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Abstract:
Growth requirements of human natural killer cells in IL-2-supplemented cultures were studied. NK cell proliferation was monitored by the MAC (morphology antibody chromosomes) technique and subset specific cell cycle analysis, which both enable direct determination of cell growth in specific lymphocyte subsets among heterogeneous lymphocyte populations. Our results show that even in the presence of saturating concentrations of IL-2, the proliferative capacity of purified CD16+ cells is quite low, but can be stimulated in a dose dependent manner by CD4+ cells. CD4+ cells could partially be replaced by IL-4 but not by various other commercially available cytokines. These results provide further evidence of the requirement of accessory stimuli in NK cell proliferation, and support the interpretation that NK cells have a direct regulatory role in specific T cell responses.
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