The article presents a reply to the study on the importance of natural killer T (NKT) in the
pathogenesis of pulmonary hypertension (PH) in pulmonary fibrosis. It states that newer,
superior ways need to be developed to prolong NKT cell numbers and activation while
avoiding anergy in patients, and cites indirect activation of cells which increased cell counts
even 6 months after vaccination as a promising option. Also noted is NKT cell therapy's
potential application to other diseases.

In our study we linked the absence of NKT-like cells to the abundance of vascular collagen
deposition in PF-PH patients, and show that specific NKT cell activation was able to reduce
profibrotic processes in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro (1). As highlighted by Wang and Zhou, the
usage of human material paired with the corresponding clinical data is a major strength of
this study. Over a period of several years, pulmonary arteries were freshly isolated from
explanted human lung tissue of end-stage lung fibrosis patients, single cell digests prepared …