About this Research Topic
Emerging evidence supports the role for NK cells in the control of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
the rate of SARS-CoV-2 clearance and disease progression have been associated with NK cell activity and NK cell dysfunction has been linked with increased disease susceptibility. In COVID-19 patients, an early depletion of NK cells in the circulation has been reported in the acute infection, likely due to the recruitment of NK cells from the circulation to the lung. In the peripheral blood, NK cells display an activated and cycling phenotype. Paralleling to the activation, some markers associated with NK cell exhaustion/dysregulation were described in COVID-19 patients, possibly explain the blunted NK cell activity in some SARS-CoV-2 infected patients. Given these observations, NK cells could be a potential target for the development of therapeutic strategies by improving their innate capacity to eliminate infected cells, activate other arms of immune system, and exploiting their adaptive or ‘memory’ properties to specifically engage subsets with virus specificity and/or immunological memory. However, our understanding in the role of NK cells in SARS-CoV-2 infection remains incomplete, and further research in the involvement of NK cells in either SARS-CoV-2 viral clearance or persistence is needed.
Under this Research Topic, we welcome the Original Research Articles, Methods, and Reviews that investigate cellular, transcriptional and epigenetic changes of NK cells in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and/or vaccination, their involvement to immune responses to natural infection and/or vaccination, and their potentials as a therapeutic target in COVID-19 infection.
The following direction are especially welcome:
(1) Identification of previously underappreciated NK cell signatures associated with disease progression and/or vaccine responses.
(2) Investigation tissue resident NK cells and their involvement in modulating viral persistence, particularly within key tissue compartments.
(3) The potential use of NK cells as a therapeutic agent in COVID-19 infection and the current challenges in advocating NK cell therapy.
Keywords: natural killer cells, NK cells, covid, coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, infection
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.