REVIEWOpen Access

Uterine Natural Killer Cells and Implantation

Guangzhou Institute of Pediatrics, Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center, Guangzhou, China

Correspondence should be addressed to: Dr Gendie E. Lash, Division of Uterine Vascular Biology, Guangzhou Institute of Pediatrics, Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center, 9 Jinsui Rd, Guangzhou 510623, China.

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S2661318221500195Cited by:0 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

Decidual leukocytes make up approximately 30% of all decidual stromal cells in early pregnancy, of which 70% are uterine natural killer (uNK) cells. uNK cells are phenotypically distinct from peripheral blood NK cells, being CD56 $^{bright}$ $^{bright}$ CD16 $^{-}$ $^{-}$ . A recent single-cell sequencing project of the decidua identified three subsets of uNK cells, but we are yet to determine how they differ functionally. Several roles for uNK cells in implantation are starting to emerge including biosensing of poor-quality embryos, killing of bacteria infected trophoblast, spiral artery remodeling, and regulation of trophoblast invasion. Altered numbers of uNK cells have been identified in several pathological conditions, but whether this is causative of the condition is currently unclear.

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Vol. 03, No. 04

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History

Received 16 September 2021

Accepted 7 December 2021

Published: 14 January 2022

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This is an Open Access article published by World Scientific Publishing Company. It is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) License which permits use, distribution and reproduction, provided that the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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Uterine Natural Killer Cells and Implantation

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