Fig. 5
From: Natural killer cell therapy for hematologic malignancies: successes, challenges, and the future
TGF-β. TGF-β secreted by leukemic blasts binds to the TGF-β receptor on NK cells leading to phosphorylation, trimerization, and translocation of SMAD complexes across the nuclear membrane. The downstream epigenetic modifications inhibit NK cell function with decreased cytokine production, impaired cytotoxicity, and downregulation of NK cell activating receptors (NKG2D, NKp30, DNAM-1, TRAIL, and CD16)