natural killer cell cytotoxicity against skov3 after hla-g downregulation by shrna

background: hla-g is a nonclassical hla class i molecule which, when elevated in tumor cells, is one of the main factors involved in tumor evasion of immune responses including nk and t cells. objective: to evaluate the effect of hla-g downregulation on nk cell cytotoxicity in tumor cell lines. methods: the expression level of hla-g was measured by real-time pcr and flowcytometry after transfection of skov3 by shrna.1, which targets specific sequences in exon 4, or shrna.2, which targets both exons 4 and 6. nk-92mi cell cytotoxicity against transfected or untransfected target cell lines was measured with the lactate dehydrogenase (ldh) release assay. the jeg-3 cell line was used as a positive control. results: membrane-bound hla-g expression levels decreased significantly in both cell lines after transfection with both shrnas compared to their corresponding untransfected cells (p