Fig. 8

The role of IL-12 in mediating decidua parietalis mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (DPMSCs) increasing natural killer (NK) cell expression of interleukin-18 receptor (IL-18R) and the role of IL-18R in mediating NK cell cytolytic activity against MCF-7 breast cancer cells. Inhibiting IL-12 secretion by DPMSCs reduced NK expression of IL-18R as determined by flow cytometry (a,b) while NK cell expression of reduced levels of IL-18R did not affect NK cell cytolytic activity against MCF-7 cells as shown by the xCELLigence real-time cell analyzer; MCF-7 were completely lysed by IL-2-activated NK cells cocultured with DPMSCs in the absence or presence of neutralizing IL-12 antibody as compared with MCF-7 cells cultured alone (c). Experiments were carried out in triplicate and repeated three times using NK cells and DPMSCs prepared from the peripheral blood of three different healthy donors and three different fetal membranes, respectively. Bars represent standard errors. *P < 0.05