ABSTRACT
NK (natural killer) cells are a kind of cytotoxic lymphocytes which have difference from T and B cells. Many NK cell related antitumor immunotherapies have been applied in clinical treatment, such as transfusion of adoptive NK cells, NK cell stimulating cytokines, chimeric antigen receptor-NK (CAR-NK) cells and NK cell inhibitory receptor inhibitors. In addition, the therapy of using drugs to strengthen the anti-tumor effect of NK cells also has a good prospect. There has been many reports on the drug promoting NK cell recognition and killing of tumor cells. The mechanisms are mainly related with modulating the expression of natural-killer group 2 member D (NKG2D) ligands, natural cytotoxic receptor (NCR) ligand, NKG2D receptor and so on, and increasing the release of NK cell stimulating cytokines. In this paper, recent advances in drug therapy based NK cell anti-tumor researches are reviewed, to provide references for the future researches.