CD56dim NK cells are increased in cervical cancer and precursor lesions while T cells are decreased
We first analyzed cytotoxic and potentially cytotoxic lymphocyte populations in our different study groups. We observed that the CD56dim NK cell population (Figure 1 A) was increased in cervical cancer patients (CC group), patients with high grade lesions (HG group), and patients with low grade lesions (LG group) in comparison with healthy donors (HD group). An inverse relationship was seen with CD3+ T cells (Figure 1 C), with a decrease seen in all patient groups. In the CD56bright NK cell population, no significant changes were observed between groups (Figure 1 B).
When we analyzed the cell counts of individual samples, we found that CD56dim NK cell and CD3+ T cell percentages (Figure 1 D) were often negatively correlated (r = -0.6883;p <0.0011). That is, that the donors (from all groups, HD to CC) with higher CD56dim tended to have lower CD3+ T cell percentages, and the those with higher T cell counts tended to have lower CD56dim counts. For this reason, we decided to focus our subsequent checkpoint analysis on both NK and T cells, with the idea that some patients might be more polarized towards either the NK or T cell responses. No significant correlation was found between CD56bright NK cells vs CD3+ T cells or CD56bright NK cells vs CD56dim NK cells (data not shown).