Stefanie Flohé and her team, together with EGIS members I. Rubio and B. Scicluna, recently published an exploratory study on NK cells from patients with sepsis. The group detected a persistent defect in IFN-γ production in response to Staphylococcus aureus as a putative secondary infectious insult especially in patients who later developed nosocomial infections. This impairment was independent from environmental cues but was associated with a cell-intrinsic modulation of metabolic regulation including reduced expression of nutrient transporters and suppressed activity of “mammalian target of rapamycin” (mTORC1), the key hub in cellular metabolic adaptation. Mechanistically, pharmacological inhibition of AMP-induced kinase (AMPK) restored mTORC1 signalling and IFN-γ production suggesting that a disturbed metabolic balance contributes to NK cell dysfunction during sepsis.
van der Wurff A et al. Disturbed metabolic adaptation drives natural killer cell dysfunction in association with nosocomial infection during human sepsis. eBioMedicine. 2026;129:106345. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2026.106345
