E-mail this article

T he continuous, in vivo infusion of low-dose IL-2 selectively expands the absolute number of human natural killer (NK) cells after 4–6 weeks of therapy. The mechanism responsible for this expansion is unknown and was examined in this study. NK cells cultured at low concentrations of IL-2, comparable to those found during in vivo therapy, proliferate for 6 days and then exit the cell cycle. However, NK cells in vivo did not traverse the S/G₂/M phase of the cell cycle during low-dose IL-2 therapy. Low concentrations of IL-2 delay programmed cell death of NK cells but have the same effect on resting T cells that do not expand in vivo. When CD34⁺ bone marrow hematopoietic progenitor cells are cultured for 21 days with low concentrations of IL-2, they differentiate into CD56⁺CD3⁻ NK cells, not T cells. Thus, the selective expansion of human NK cells during continuous in vivo infusion of low-dose IL-2 likely results from enhanced NK-cell differentiation from bone marrow progenitors, combined with an IL-2–dependent delay in NK-cell death, rather than proliferation of mature NK cells in the periphery.