Editorial Board Members’ Collection Series: “Advanced NK Cell-Based Approaches for Cancer Immunotherapy”

Dear Colleagues,

Natural Killer (NK) cells play an essential role in killing cancer cells. Cancer patients generally harbor dysfunctional and a reduced number of effector immune cells, including NK cells. Thus, the adoptive transfer of autologous or allogeneic ex vivo-activated NK or genetically modified NK cells is a promising cellular therapy. In this Special Issue, we welcome the submission of Original Research, Review, and Opinion articles that enhance our understanding of the recent advances in molecular strategies aimed to boost the NK cell-mediated killing of tumor cells and that provide insights into new viewpoints on the adoption of NK cells in cancer immunotherapy. This article collection aims to cover the following aspects:

1. Molecular strategies aimed at enhancing the expression of surface-activating ligands on tumor cells.
2. Targeting molecular pathways that facilitate the NK cell-mediated ADCC.
3. Molecular strategies promoting the production of chemoattractant molecules in the tumor microenvironment.
4. Molecular strategies enhancing the expression of ligands for integrins and molecules involved in the formation of an activating synapse between tumor and NK cells.
5. Strategies that target immune checkpoint inhibitors, combined with adoptively transferred NK cells.
6. The generation of chimeric receptor-engineered NK cells to be adopted for the clinical treatment of cancer patients.

Prof. Dr. Roberto Bei
Dr. Loredana Cifaldi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• NK
• CAR-NK
• cancer
• immunotherapy
• solid tumor
• hematopoietic tumor