UC San Diego

Hypoxia in the context of cancer has been well studied as it has been shown that tumors that are in hypoxic conditions tend to become malignant or metastatic. There is evidence that hypoxia is able to modulate tumor immunogenicity, however this phenomenon has not been well characterized. Here, we look at the effects of hypoxia on tumor immunogenicity from the perspective of NK cell recognition. We find that hypoxia decreases the expression of the NKG2D ligand, H60 post-transcriptionally but not post-translationally, and that this down-modulation of the ligand prevents tumor recognition by NK cells