Roles of innate lymphoid cells in tumor immunity and their clinical significance / 中华微生物学和免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

Innate lymphoid cells ( ILCs) are a recently characterized family of immune cells that have critical roles in innate immunity, immune regulation, maintenance of tissue homeostasis, and tissue re-pair and remodeling. Besides the conventional innate lymphocytes including NK cells and lymphoid tissue-in-ducer cells, the ILC family can be categorized into three groups, ILC1s, ILC2s and ILC3s. These non-cyto-toxic ILC subsets have been identified to confer a diverse array of functions in oncogenesis and metastasis, immune surveillance, and antitumor immunity. In this review, we summarized the emerging findings in re-cent years regarding the roles of ILCs in immuno-oncology, and highlighted their potentials in immunothera-peutic approaches to tumors.