Rebecca Asiimwe, Brittney Knott, Morgan E Greene, Emma Wright, Markayla Bell, Daniel Epstein, Stefani D Yates, Matthew D Cheung, Michael V Gonzalez, Samantha Fry, Emily Boydston, Stephanie Clevenger, Jayme E Locke, James F George, Richard Burney, Nitin Arora, Virginia E Duncan, Holly E Richter, Deidre Gunn, Aharon G Freud, Shawn C Little, Paige M Porrett
UNLABELLED: Uterine natural killer cells (uNKs) are a tissue resident lymphocyte population that are critical for pregnancy success. Although mouse models have demonstrated that NK deficiency results in abnormal placentation and poor pregnancy outcomes, the generalizability of this knowledge to humans remains unclear. Here we identify uterus transplant (UTx) recipients as a human population with reduced endometrial NK cells and altered pregnancy phenotypes. We further show that the NK reduction in UTx is due to impaired transcriptional programming of NK tissue residency due to blockade of the transcription factor nuclear factor of activated T cells (NFAT)...
March 12, 2024: bioRxiv