www.mdpi.com/journal/ijms Article Immunohistochemical Analysis of the Natural Killer Cell Cytotoxicity Pathway in Human Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms

Abstract: Our previous analysis using genome-wide microarray expression data revealed extreme overrepresentation of immune related genes belonging the Natural Killer (NK) Cell Mediated Cytotoxicity pathway (hsa04650) in human abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). We followed up the microarray studies by immunohistochemical analyses using antibodies against nine members of the NK pathway (VAV1, VAV3, PLCG1, PLCG2, HCST, TYROBP, PTK2B, TNFA, and GZMB) and aortic tissue samples from AAA repair operations (n = 6) and control aortae (n = 8) from age-, sex- and ethnicity-matched donors from autopsies. The results confirmed the microarray results. Two different members of OPEN ACCESS Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2015, 16 11197 the NK pathway, HCST and GRZB, which act at different steps in the NK-pathway, wer