Immunotherapy has ushered in an exciting new era for cancer treatment. The recent discovery and success of immune checkpoint blockade and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell adoptive cell transfer has raised interest in using other immune cells, including Natural Killer (NK) cells, which might overcome some limitations with CAR T cell therapy. In this review article, we discuss the evidence that cellular metabolism is crucial for NK cell effector function. Additionally, potential strategies to optimise the metabolism of therapeutic NK cells for improved function within the metabolically adverse tumour microenvironment will be explored.
Keywords: Cancer immunotherapy; Metabolic signalling; Metabolism; Mitochondria; Natural Killer cells; Nutrients; PPAR; SREBP; Tumour microenvironment; cMyc; mTORC1.