[Recent advances of studies on interaction of natural killer cells and fungi].

Natural killer (NK) cells are important innate immune effector cells with broad applications in killing the tumor cells and pathogens due to its cytotoxicity without prior immune sensitization. Unfortunately, in humans, the activity of NK cells against fungi is poorly characterized. Insight progress in the fields of NK cells activating, pattern recognition receptors, signal modulating and correlated cell factors (IFN-γ, GM-CSF, IL-10 and so on) has revolutionized understanding of the selective killing fungi by NK cells. Different morphotypes also can affect the immune status of NK cells. This article reviews the mechanism of fungi immune reaction, and the interaction between NK cells and fungi, and provides some new ideas for further study on pathogenesis of fungus and other infectious diseases and NK cell adoptively transferred immunotherapy.