Acute exercise preferentially redeploys NK-cells with a highly-differentiated phenotype and augments cytotoxicity against lymphoma and multiple myeloma target cells

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• Exercise redeploys NK-cells with a highly-differentiated phenotype and enriches the blood compartment with those subsets capable of effectively killing myeloma and lymphoma target cells.

NK-cells undergo a “licensing” process as they develop into fully-functional cells capable of efficiently killing targets. NK-cell differentiation is accompanied by an increased surface expression of inhibitory killer immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) molecules, which is positively associated with cytotoxicity against the HLA-deficient K562 cell line. NK-cells are rapidly redeployed between the blood and tissues in response to acute exercise, but it is not known if exercise evokes a preferential trafficking of differentiated NK-cells or impacts NK-cell cytotoxic activity (NKCA) against HLA-expressing target cells.Sixteen healthy cyclists performed three 30-min bouts of cycling exercise at −5%, +5%, and +15% of lactate threshold. Blood samples obtained before, immediately after, and 1 h after exercise were used to enumerate NK-cells and their subsets, and determine NKCA and degranulating subsets (CD107+) against cell lines of multiple myeloma (U266 and RPMI-8226), lymphoma (721.221 and 221 AEH), and leukemia (K562) origin by 4 and 10-color flow cytometry, respectively.Exercise evoked a stepwise redeployment of NK-cell subsets in accordance with differentiation status [highly-differentiated (KIR+/NKG2A−) > medium-differentiated (KIR+/NKG2A+) > low-differentiated (KIR−/NKG2A+)] that was consistent across all exercise intensities. NKCA per cell increased ∼1.6-fold against U266 and 221 AEH targets 1 h post-exercise and was associated with a decreased proportion of NK-cells expressing the inhibitory receptor CD158b and increased proportion of NK-cells expressing the activating receptor NKG2C, respectively. We conclude that exercise evokes a preferential redeployment of NK-cell subsets with a high differentiation phenotype and augments cytotoxicity against HLA-expressing target cells. Exercise may serve as a simple strategy to enrich the blood compartment of highly cytotoxic NK-cell subsets that can be harvested for clinical use.