Can natural killer cells become exhausted?

Can natural killer cells become exhausted? The interesting thing about natural killer cells is they kind of are cousins of T cells in a way. They're both kind of a lymphoid population, meaning a certain line of cells that develop. And because of that, it's true that if you stimulate natural killer cells, all the time. So for example, if you're giving somebody chronic antibody therapy, it's possible that you will actually exhaust the natural killer cells.

And we know from data from multiple myeloma patients that the natural killer cells from patients with advanced multiple myeloma tend to be exhausted in comparison to patients with, for example, smoldering newly diagnosed myeloma, untreated myeloma. So it's important to think about, okay, yeah, maybe these cells can be exhausted, similar to the fashion of T cells.