13501 IUPAC Gold Book - natural killer T cell 10.1351/goldbook.13501 13501 current initialism: NKT synonym: NKT cell 1 Lymphoid cells with a morphology and granule content intermediate between T cells and natural killer (NK) cells. NKT cells express low levels of \(\upalpha{:}\upbeta\) T-cell receptor with an invariant α chain and very restricted \(\ce{\upbeta\ chain}\) specificity, recognize lipid and glycolipid antigens presented by the nonclassical MHC-like molecule CD1d, and are potent producers of interleukin (IL)-4 and IFN-γ. IFN-γ https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/13163 MHC https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/13430 T cells https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/13724 interleukin (IL) https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/13338 natural killer (NK) cells https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/13499 α:β T-cell receptor https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/12825 PAC, 2012, 84, 1113. 'IUPAC glossary of terms used in immunotoxicology (IUPAC Recommendations 2012)' on page 1219 (https://doi.org/10.1351/PAC-REC-11-06-03) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/13501/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/13501/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/13501/plain Citation: 'natural killer T cell' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.13501 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-07-14T02:01:27+00:00